Zetta Targets NetApp With Cloud Backup

Cloud backup firm Zetta Inc. is hitting up the channel with a three-in-one backup solution for NetApp environments, a move that indicates cloud backup is reaching its stride in the SMB and lower market segments.

The cloud-based solution, dubbed DataProtect for NetApp, incorporates offsite backup, disaster recovery and archiving capabilities with replication and recovery software, online storage and WAN traffic optimization integrations that target environments relying on NetApp storage solutions. Significant features are open replication, flexible recovery and incremental forever backups conducted from a cloud platform. The product supports UNIX and NTFS ACLs and LUN backups and restores. Pricing and availability can be obtained via reseller partners and MSPs.

“Zetta delivers an affordable enterprise-grade offsite backup and disaster recovery solution for organizations that don’t have budgets and resources for redundant NetApp storage systems, SnapMirror software, or another datacenter,” said Gary Sevounts, Zetta.net vice president of marketing. “For organizations that rely today on tape and expensive backup software, Zetta helps to significantly reduce the cost and complexity, while improving RPO and RTO.”

As mentioned on Channelnomics, backup solutions have experienced an upsurge in recent months, evident by an uptick of recent launches from Evault Inc., Asigra Inc., Carbonite Inc., KeepItSafe Inc., and others.

One of the biggest drivers is the cloud: It’s cost effective; it enables scalability and on-demand deployment; it provides a dependable recurring revenue stream for partners, while representing a springboard from which to launch customizable services; it creates attractive efficiencies for customers that increase ROI; and it transcends geographies and allows partners to provide services from anywhere in the world.

The cloud also gives backup solutions increased traction and market reach. This holds especially true with one of the biggest and diverse market segments: the SMB.

A solution like Zetta.net, for example, isn’t targeting large enterprise customers with armies of IT staff to monitor backup events. Rather, the solution is going after lower market segments — small/medium enterprises, distributed organizations and managed services providers (MSPs) — considering transitions away from legacy tape- and disk-based solutions. These are often the same segments that stand to benefit from cloud-based backup services with an easy, monthly subscription service outsourced to managing channel partners.

Zetta positions itself as the easy alternative by touting a simple download and deployment. Once installed, customers can map the ZettaMirror client to the NetApp filer, and select the data to be backed up. The net-net is an easy upsell for partners, and with good reason.

Regulatory compliance mandates stipulate the necessity of backup in just about every market segment, which means there’s little getting around backup requirements regardless of market segment or vertical. Cloud’s ease of use, deployment and manageability reduces the burden SMBs carry in ensuring those compliance objectives are met.

The cloud also allows fundamental solutions such as backup to be integrated in a much wider variety of solution sets, which include comprehensive security and storage suites. This gives partners the ability to create upsell opportunities by leveraging cloud backup as a value-add.