In a flurry of initiatives united by making Axcient easier for MSPs to use and sell profitably, the company also upgraded their hardware appliances in an attempt to cut MSP support costs.
Axcient CRO Angus Robertson
It has been a busy week for backup and cloud migration provider Axcient. Last week, at the CompTIA ChannelCon event in Las Vegas, the company formally launched their Axcient Marketing Portal, a new enablement tool that lets MSPs more easily build out comprehensive marketing programs. Today, they are making several announcements which improve the core solution set. They have greatly simplified the pricing of their Axcient Cloud, added unlimited storage, and added a near-instant boot capability that improves Recovery Time Objectives [RTO]. Axcient has also upgraded their hardware appliances, including hot-swappable drives.
“We are making several announcements that improve TCO [total cost of ownership], to make our MSP partners more profitable,” said Angus Robertson, Axcient’s chief revenue officer.
Replibit, the Axcient Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery offering, has new, simplified pricing. That’s an understatement
“We have reduced the number of SKUs from over 1000 to four,” Robertson noted. That makes the product much easier for partners to position and to sell.
“We are now also offering unlimited storage and retention in the Axcient Cloud,” Robertson added. “We see this as a significant differentiator for us, because it is something that competitors like StorageCraft and Datto do not do.”
The company is also announcing a new release of Axcient Cloud, which makes Axcient BDR one of the fastest overall industry RTO with near instant boot capability.
The appliances that MSPs deploy have had enhancements as part of a general fresh, and will be easier for MSPs to work with as a result.
“We have new hardware coming out, and going forward, all of our new hardware has hot-swappable drives and IPMI [Intelligent Platform Management Interface] for proactive alerting,” Robertson said. The idea here is to pre-empt the need for MSP truck rolls.
Axcient has a 100 per cent channel strategy – something the company takes pains to remind MSPs at every opportunity. Axcient is a rebranding of the company that was created when eFolder and Axcient merged last year, but where Axcient was effectively folded into eFolder. The name of the merged entity was ultimately changed to Axcient because it was perceived to be a stronger brand. The Axcient brand did have one key problem, however. The old Axcient had forsaken its original channel model and taken much of their business direct. Consequently, reminding MSPs that the new Axcient is not the old Axcient, and is completely committed to the channel, was and remains a top priority.
Channel recruitment has been a priority, as well as encouraging MSPs to cross-sell more of the portfolio, and the company has had some success with both.
“We grew the number of partners that sell Replibit [a legacy eFolder offering] by over 50 per cent year over year,” Robertson said.
