ExaGrid and ATS National Partnership for Cloud-Based DR as a Service

ExaGrid
Systems, Inc. and ATScloud (ATS National,
Inc.) announced a partnership to offer customers cloud-based DR as a
Service.

New and existing ExaGrid customers now have
the option to replicate their backup data to ATScloud’s secure cloud
infrastructure, reducing or eliminating the need to vault tapes off-site for
disaster protection.

This announcement marks the first of multiple cloud-based
solutions ExaGrid will offer in 2013 that extend the core product’s disk backup
with dedupe capabilities to enable DR in the cloud, and ExaGrid is a disk
backup with dedupe vendor offering customers multiple options for cloud-based
DR protection of their backup data.

This joint backup and DR solution, Secure
BDRcloud, will enable ExaGrid customers to realize the following benefits:

• Secure storage of data in tier IV data
  centers throughout the US

• No up-front capital costs for off-site
  storage of backup data for DR

• Flexibility to pay for only what is used,
  avoiding the need to overbuy capacity

• Ability to add or remove capacity quickly
  as needs dictate

• Advanced options for DR audit and rapid
  recovery of backup data in the event of a disaster

Gartner, Inc. predicted that by 2014, 30%
of mid-sized companies (those with annual revenues or operating budgets of
between $150 million and $1 billion) will have adopted cloud-based DR, which is
up from just 1% in 2011. In
addition, a survey by Forrester Research found that almost three quarters of IT
managers whose organizations have already adopted IaaS said access to improved
DR ranked as either very important or high on the importance scale in their
decision, according to an October 2012 article by FCW magazine.

ExaGrid’s disk-based backup with dedupe
system avoids the hassles and delays associated with restoring from tapes for
on-site recoveries and also is suited for instant on-site recoveries by keeping
the most recent backups intact. Because ExaGrid keeps a copy of the latest
backup in complete form ready to restore, it avoids the time-consuming ‘rehydration’
process required of other disk backup systems that only store deduplicated
data. Now, with the addition of the ATScloud partnership, ExaGrid extends its offerings
for off-site DR protection.

"We’re
very pleased with the ability to have our backup data offsite and online at the
same time. And the pay-as-you-go model made a lot of sense for us, giving us
the ability to easily expand as data grows," said John Rowe,
data/information systems engineer for North Central Texas Trauma Regional
Advisory Council. "Offsite tape can
be a nightmare, and our major goal was having a real-time offsite backup copy
for redundancy that we can easily pull back across the WAN in case our primary
site went down. ExaGrid and ATS integrated seamlessly with our existing backup
infrastructure, and now life is easier and I can be comfortable at night
knowing we have a HA copy of our backup data offsite without the management
headaches of tape or having to manage our own offsite DR."

ATScloud is known for its infrastructure
that features innovation in a protected private cloud environment.

Marc Crespi, VP of product management for ExaGrid, said: "With the new Secure BDRcloud offering in
partnership with ATScloud, organizations have a new option for replicating data
from the primary site disk-based backup system from ExaGrid, to a cloud
securely managed by ATScloud. Customers that are looking to rid themselves of
tape for off-site retention purposes now have a highly flexible and
cost-effective option to achieve world-class protection against major data
loss."

Steve Willard, EVP, business development for ATScloud, said: "For organizations using tape to maintain a
complete set of backups off-site, it can take hours or days following a site
disaster to do a complete restore. Cloud hosting for DR offers many advantages
for organizations, including reduced up-front capital costs and the ongoing
maintenance associated with storing backup data for DR, along with the ability
to scale capacity to meet the changing needs of their business."

The joint Secure BDRcloud offering is available to new and existing ExaGrid
customers through Exagrids network of resellers and ATScloud’s network of
MSPs.