CA Adds Capacity-Based Pricing, Client Backup To ARCserve MSP Program

Also new is the ability for CA ARCserve to handle cloud-based backups of data on customer desktop and portable PCs.

The enhancements in the MSP 2.0 licensing program for CA ARCserve come about 18 months after the company first introduced an MSP program for the storage software, said Steve Fairbanks, vice president of product management for CA's data management business.

They also come less than three months after CA introduced ARCserve r16, which combines local and cloud-based data protection in both physical and virtual IT environments.

CA's new per-terabyte pricing for ARCserve now gives MSPs an alternative to the current per-server pricing, Fairbanks said.

It lets MSPs specify the number of TBs of data they are protecting, and CA handles the rest. "MSPs can use any of our technologies including tape backup, snapshots, and replication, however they want," he said. "They don't need to count the number of licenses or the number of servers. Just report the number of TBs used."

For MSPs handling large amounts of customer data, the per-terabyte pricing should result in an overall drop in costs, Fairbanks said. "It could be attractive for as few as 2 TBs of data," he said. "It depends on the RTO (recovery time objective) and RPO (recovery point objective) you want to achieve for customers. But the general rule of thumb is, with 10-plus TBs of data being protected, per-terabyte pricing starts looking attractive."

CA also introduced new bundles for MSPs based on ARCserve, including the ability to back up and protect data an almost any customer client device.

Also new is a bundling of snapshot and replication capabilities that allows customers to back data up locally while replicating it off-site at the same time for restoring data to either physical or virtual servers, he said.

A new Windows Server Advanced Virtual Edition now lets customers or MSPs working with both VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V virtualized environments provide full flexibility to back up data at the host level or in as many virtual machines as needed, Fairbanks said.

CA has also integrated ARCserve's management console with several remote management and monitoring platforms including Kaseya, Nimsoft, N-able Technologies, and LabTech Software, and Level Platforms.

Bryan Handing, principal at LightHouse Business Information Solutions, an Albuquerque, N.M.-based MSP and 15-year ARCserve partner who works with Level Platforms, said he is especially excited about the new management integration.

"This allows us to continue consolidating more and more of our monitoring into one interface instead of two or three," Handing said. "So now we'll be able to generate reporting tickets from one place. For the customer, this means faster response to their concerns.

The ability to use ARCserve for protecting desktop and notebook PC data is also welcome, Handing said.

LightHouse currently works with EMC's MozyPro to support client devices, with customer data being stored in Mozy's data centers, he said.

"With this new ARCserve capability, we can approach customers with a new solution that hosts their data in our data centers," he said. "Hosting it internally gives us more pricing flexibility."

Handing said LightHouse will also look at the new per-terabyte pricing for ARCserve MSPs.

"However, given our current scenario, we have a lot of small customers with small data needs," he said. "Our customers have not het hit the terabyte size yet."

All the new MSP capabilities for ARCserve are currently available, Fairbanks said.