Axcient enables MSPs to spin up virtual infrastructure themselves in the event of a customer incident, without having to put in a ticket and wait for Axcient support to respond, as had been the case in the old system.
Axcient, which makes business availability software for MSPs, has introduced x360Recover Virtual Office, a solution which will better enable their MSP partners to provide seamless support to their customers. It makes it easy for MSP to ensure themselves that customers infrastructure is always up and running, without the need for intervention by Axcient, and for both appliance-based and Direct-to-Cloud backups.
“This is a feature that a lot of other providers already have,” said Ben Nowacky, Senior Vice President of Product at Axcient. “It’s the ability for MSPs to virtualize backups in our cloud, and spin up in our cloud themselves, in the event of customer downtime.”
Axcient previously provided this support to partners through the Axcient Continuity Cloud. If a customer’s server or site failed, the Continuity Cloud enabled bare-metal backup images stored in Axcient’s Storage Cloud to be quickly virtualized in the cloud to bring the failed infrastructure back up.
The issue here – which Nowacky acknowledged was problematic – is that the partner could not just do this themselves. To use the Axcient Continuity Cloud, the partner would need to submit a critical support ticket with details of the resources needed, and Axcient’s support team would respond 24/7 and provision one or more continuity cloud compute nodes for the partner’s use. Once that was achieved, the partner had full self-management capabilities, and the Axcient support was no longer involved. The problem was that initial support ticket.
“The initial support-driven request to get the infrastructure spun up created a lag, a gap in the service that people complained about,” Nowacky said.
Nowacky noted that removing this need for Axcient to respond to get the process started had been on the ‘to-do’ list, but that COVID moved it to the front of the line.
“With COVID we accelerated development of this,” he stated. “An MSP can now spin it out themselves with no requests being necessary through x360Recover Virtual Office. It’s all self-supported. The only time that any MSP might need to put in a ticket now is if there is a network configuration issue.”
Axcient x360Recover Virtual Office lets MSPs instantly recover production servers and workstations themselves in the Axcient Cloud, easily configure secure access to the Virtual Office instance using VPN, Site-to-Site OpenVPN, and port forwarding, and then restore to the production server or desktop at the partner’s convenience.
“If a workstation fails, you can virtualize the disabled device in the cloud until you can get a replacement delivered,” Nowacky pointed out.
“We are protecting Direct to Cloud remote workers, and using the same technology for local VDR in the office, so if a customer is hybrid, you can still see all the systems in the office and virtualize them,” said Adam Preeo, Director of Product Management at Axcient. “You don’t have to go to a separate system. MSPs can do everything for the customer with this no matter where they were working.”
Nowacky said to expect some major announcements early in the new year around Direct to Cloud.
“We will have some big features coming out in January for Direct to Cloud, our full business continuity solution,” he indicated.
