The latest release from Acronis combines disaster recovery and data protection in a single solution. With version 11, the vendor aims to help organizations address IT environments that are increasingly hybrid in nature, consisting of physical, virtual, and cloud-based systems.

According to Izzy Azeri, senior vice president and general manager for the Americas at Acronis, business customers are facing several challenges today that are fueling the need for the vendor's products. "For one thing, the amount of data that needs to be protected is skyrocketing. Increasing storage requirements are being driven by email, ERP, document management, and imaging," said Azeri in an interview. "For another, backups need to be spread across physical, virtual, and cloud targets in order to reduce risk. That's complicated, and it costs more money."

Azeri said most companies are using two or three different products for disaster recovery and data protection, and that spells higher maintenance, support, and licensing costs. With Acronis, everything is built into one offering that can be used across cloud, virtual, and physical environments. Acronis Backup & Recovery 11, which will be available later this quarter, delivers new catalog and search data protection capabilities, improved disaster-recovery plans, multi-destination backups, improved support for tape drives and libraries, and an enhanced GUI that provides simplified workflows.

Azeri said more than 175,000 business customers across a broad range of industries use Acronis software. About 80% of them are small and midsize businesses. And the vendor uses a channel-driven model to disseminate its solutions, engaging more than 20,000 partners around the world.

As virtual and cloud environments propagate in the corporate arena, the need for a multifaceted solution such as Acronis 11 will increase. Azeri said virtualization is expected to increase 50% in the SMB space in the next 12 months, while cloud computing is expected to climb about 16%.

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