Acronis is increasing its focus on the Australia and New Zealand region, officially launching its backup-as-a-service offering here.

Acronis is a vendor that specialises in backup, disaster recovery, secure file sharing and data access. The backup-as-a-service offering delivers data protection capabilities without a significant upfront investment.

The new service offering builds on Acronis's cloud portfolio in ANZ and poises the vendor for further growth in the region.

Lincoln Goldsmith, Acronis ANZ general manager, says this region is an increasingly important market for the vendor, and one of the reasons for this is that there is a high proportion of small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the region.

Goldsmith says SMBs in the ANZ region portray a forward-thinking nature with a strong uptake of cloud and other as-a-service offerings.

However, many of these businesses fail to implement adequate backup measures, despite the importance of business continuity.

“As the amount of data and private customer information held by companies increases, the need for effective backup and business continuity measures is also set to increase.

“Acronis research has shown that only 2% of companies back up 100% of their data, and 36% of companies do not back up virtual servers as often as they back up their physical servers.

“This is concerning, and can directly affect these organisations' ability to operate in the event of a natural disaster, cyber attack or equipment failure,” Goldsmith says.

“Gartner estimates that 65% of SMBs are taking risks by not having a comprehensive disaster recovery plan in place, which includes backups. These businesses need help,” he says.

“Acronis has launched Backup-as-a-Service to help these organisations protect their business-critical data and plan for disaster recovery.”  Goldsmith says, “Acronis is well-positioned to help Australian and New Zealand organisations protect their operations and will continue to grow in this region along with the market need.”  Moheb Moses, Channel Dynamics director, says, “Companies in Australia need as-as-service solutions that can bolster their business operations without adding significant costs to the bottom line.

“Vendors that can offer solutions that meet these needs, and also create opportunities for partners to deliver solutions that fit customer business models and increase profitability, are going to be the ones to watch over the next 12-18 months.”

Acronis currently has 16 distributors in Australia and two in New Zealand.