Welcome to ChannelE2E's latest predictions list. This time, we look at 10 cloud-centric BDR (backup and disaster recovery) predictions for 2016, and their potential implications for VARs and MSPs.
10. Axcient Will Reach an Inflection Point: Axcient raised $25 million in Series E funding back in February 2015. Not many companies remain private or raise funds all the way through Series E. That leads me to believe Axcient will either pursue an IPO or company sale in 2016. Total speculation on my part.
9. Datto Won't Go Public (Yet): Datto, an MSP-centric provider of business continuity solutions, won't launch an Initial Public Offering until 2017. In the meantime, the unicorn ($1 billion-plus valuation) will use existing venture funding -- and profits -- to accelerate its global strategy.
8. Carbonite Will Pursue the Midmarket: After stretching from home offices to small businesses, Carbonite will attempt to leverage the recent EVault acquisition to push into the midmarket. But it won't be an easy journey -- especially as the company strives to balance direct and channel sales. Still, channel-friendly talent is arriving rapidly. Carbonite recently hired Kaspersky Lab veteran Chris Doggett as senior VP of global sales, and Jessica Couto as VP of North American channel sales.
7. Zetta Will Say Hello to MSPs. Again: The disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) provider launched in 2009 and has undergone multiple management changes during its growth -- including three CEOs (founding CEO Jeff Treuhaft, 2009-2010; Ali Jenab, 2010-2015; and Mike Grossman, present). SoonR veteran Mark Seaman recently joined Zetta as VP of sales to lead the MSP charge. But he'll face a very densely populated competitive field.
6. Safe Harbor Headache: Most small VARs and MSPs will struggle to understand rapidly changing privacy laws in Europe, and the EU demise of Safe Harbor will introduce some new challenges. Those VARs and MSPs will lean heavily on larger cloud service providers (CSPs) for guidance on compliance while managing data that flows between the U.S. and Europe.
5. Continuum Will Get Hooked on Hosting Providers: The company's R1Soft acquisition is popular with MSPs. But don't overlook all the hosting providers that are now embracing Continuum's BDR platform.
4. Arcserve Will Have a U.S. Renaissance: Under CA Technologies' former ownership, Arcserve lost market share in the U.S. but continued to perform well internationally. Now that Arcserve is independently owned and has service provider licensing widely available, the company will regain some ground in the U.S. market.
3. StorageCraft Still Growing Silently?: For several years there, StorageCraft was growing about 100 percent annually. Plus, VMware was leveraging the company's technology. ChannelE2E suspects it's still a growth story over at StorageCraft... but we're checking...
2. Integrated Platforms, Please: More and more MSPs will opt for single-vendor options that marry multiple management tools under one roof -- BDR included. Names like LogicNow and Continuum, among others, come to mind.
1. Public Clouds Rule: More and more channel partners will ask their BDR vendors why they're building private clouds -- when the storage world is shifting more and more data to public clouds like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and perhaps even IBM SoftLayer. BDR players will need to have a secret sauce to keep their own clouds running, or they'll need to rewrite and optimize their data protection technology for public clouds.
Note: ChannelE2E is running 2016 technology predictions throughout the month of December 2016. Submit predictions for consideration to [email protected]. Read all daily predictions here.
