Some Atera MSPs were already using Acronis, and had asked for this integration to let them management the backup within the Atera management system.

Atera, which makes a platform that provides an integrated Remote Monitoring and Management [RMM], Professional Services Automation [PSA] and remote access solution, has added a new backup integration to the mix. They have partnered with Acronis to bring Acronis Cyber Backup to their MSP partners.

Atera has had an existing backup integration, with IASO, a Dutch company that specialized in providing online backup to service providers, which was acquired by GFI Software in 2013, and is now part of SolarWinds following their purchase of GFI. Atera has had numerous requests from their MSPs to add the Acronis platform, however.

“Atera is not a big company,” said Tal Dagan, Vice President of Product at Atera. “What has made us so successful is that we listen a lot to our customers. We don’t bring in things where we have to educate them a lot about the changes. With Acronis, a lot of customers wanted this integration. They like the way Atera  presents things as a single pane of glass and wanted Acronis to be within that.”

The Atera integration with Acronis Cyber Backup allows Atera customers who were already using the Acronis backup to see the immediate benefits of integration through the single pane of glass. It also brings ransomware protection and instant recovery time objectives [RTO].

“Some customers who were using the SolarWinds backup wanted this, as well as Acronis customers,” Dagan said. “We think new customers will also like this new integration.” That earlier integration remains available for customers who want that.

The decision to add the Acronis integration was been in the works for a while, and was made before Dagan joined Atera seven months ago. However, Dagan, who now oversees any new integrations, says that some more are on the way – although not in the backup space.

Tal Dagan, Vice President of Product at Atera

“We do have plans to add more integrations, likely two more by the end of the year,” he said. “We are looking at ones that our customers want the most regardless of the vertical. We do not have any concrete plans to add another backup solution.”

Dagan noted that Atera just recently reacted to MSP requests for remote capability to deal with the pandemic demands by providing an integration with Splashtop’s software into Atera’s platform that lets MSPs rapidly set up remote workforces for their clients from anywhere.

“As part of the COVID-19 craziness, we had a lot of requests to enable work from home, so we reacted to that by enabling this feature a month ago,” Dagan said.

One upcoming change will be to Atera’s architecture, to make it easier to develop new integrations.

“Another thing I’m planning – and need time and resources to do – is to change our plug-in architecture for our integrations, which will make it easier when we develop a new integration,” Dagan indicated.”