Memory, performance and capacity have been increased, with capacity on the physical models going up from 100 per cent in the entry level appliances, to between 15-30 per cent in the high end ones.
Security vendor Barracuda has announced a complete refresh of its entire portfolio of backup appliances, which offer upgraded capabilities without price increases. In addition, eligible customers who have purchased an Instant Replacement subscription from Barracuda are able to receive a free replacement appliance with the new specs.
While the upgrades include physical, virtual and cloud appliances, the large majority of what Barracuda sells today remain its traditional physical appliances.
“We do have a lot of conversations about virtual, but most of what we sell today is still physical appliances,” said Rod Mathews, Barracuda’s senior vice president and general manager, Data Protection. “The cloud-to-cloud backup services are new and focused around Office 365.”
Matthews said that the upgrades are significant, offering significant upgrades at the same price as before. Capacity upgrades mean a lower cost per Terabyte, and performance enhancements let customers back up and replicate data faster, meet backup windows, get data offsite more efficiently, and restore faster in the event of data loss. 10 GB Ethernet connections are also now included with the Barracuda Backup 690, 790 and 890 appliances, which are in the upper middle part of the portfolio, where the 190 is the entry model. Models higher end than these already came with 10 GB standard.
Rod Mathews, Barracuda’s senior vice president and general manager, Data Protection
“There is more storage, more CPU, and more memory, to increase the performance,” Matthews stated. “We have also increased capacity by 100 per cent on the entry level appliances, by 50 per cent on the mid-range and by 15-30 per cent on the high end. Our highest end model doesn’t have increased capacity, but does have increased performance. For the entry level systems, the customer gets twice as much storage for the same price.”
New appliances are available to eligible customers with Instant Replacement subscriptions, while software performance updates are available at no additional cost to customers with active Energize Update subscriptions, which provide new firmware updates as they become available. The Instant Replacement subscriptions, a mature Barracuda offering, provide a brand new system after four years.
“The degree to which customers purchase Instant Replacement subscriptions varies from product line to product line,” Mathews said. “Email protection differs from data protection for example. Data protection has a higher attach rate for Instant Replacement because of the capacity benefits.”
All the new appliances are available now, through the reseller and MSP partners who are Barracuda’s entire route to market.
“We didn’t issue the release until we were actually shipping the products,” Matthews said. “Anyone who orders product today will get one of the new configurations.”
