Cloud backup purveyor Acronis has partnered with Google Cloud Platform on a data protection integration strategy for partners and customers. It's the latest indicator that Google is gaining credibility against Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure as a credible third public cloud for ISVs, partners, MSPs and associated end-customers.
Going forward, Acronis partners and customers will now be able to store their data in a “significantly” higher number of Google cloud regions, the company asserts, bringing fast upload speeds and data sovereignty options to users in more countries.
Access to Google Cloud Platform will also help users reduce their recovery time objectives (RTO) and achieve service level agreement (SLA) targets, especially when it comes to disaster recovery solutions, the company said. Future releases of Acronis’ backup, disaster recovery, and file sync and share solutions will be integrated with GCP.
Acronis Embraces Multiple Public Clouds
Acronis already supports multiple cloud platforms -- including AWS, Azure and the company’s own infrastructure. Still, integration with Google Cloud was one of the top requests from Acronis users, according to the company’s president John Zanni. "There are many businesses who have invested in public cloud infrastructure. We're making it easy for them to use it with Acronis," he said.
As part of the relationship, Acronis says it will grow support for Google Cloud workloads, offer a Google Cloud deployment model for the Acronis Backup management server, and enable the use of Google Cloud Platform for disaster recovery.
Google will also benefit from the deal as it gains access to thousands of Acronis’ partners, potentially increasing its penetration in the mid-market, the company said in a prepared statement.
"We are seeing an increasing number of customers take advantage of our storage products for data protection because they offer better flexibility, performance, and economics," said Adam Massey, director, strategic technology partners, Google Cloud. "By partnering with Acronis, an established leader in the industry, we hope to make the customers data protection journey even easier."
Google Cloud Platform: MSP, ISV Momentum
Google has been making inroads with some MSPs and ISVs in recent years.
For instance, Rackspace extended its managed support for the Google Cloud platform, while Google's relationship with iTopia promotes Windows-based desktop as a service to MSPs in the SMB sector. And more companies are backing the platform, including Accenture, Cascadeo, Cloudreach. According to a Google, platform partners must offer at least consulting, assessment, implementation, monitoring, and optimization services.
Backed by partners, Google's cloud business recently hit the $1 billion-per-quarter revenue run rate, with year-over-year growth rates of about 85 percent, according to Canalys. Impressive for Google, but Amazon (32 precent) and Microsoft (14 percent) remain the market leaders, with Google at about 8 percent for Q4 2017, Canalys said.
More On Acronis
For its part, Acronis recently launched its Acronis Data Cloud, which offers partners a unified management console. But the company is known for not announcing the release dates of its products ahead of time, so it’s unknown when users will begin to see the Google Cloud integration, but they can be expected in the second half of 2018.
A partnership with Google Cloud is a big deal, but Acronis has been setting up strategic partnerships for some time. The deals have come as Acronis, which opened its doors in 2003, has evolved to become more than a backup company, delving into software-defined storage (SDS) as it looks toward what the AI revolution will mean for providers. Still, as evidenced by this announcement, the company is keeping a firm foothold in what it knows best: cloud backup.
