Intronis Introduces New Backup And Disaster Recovery Platform With Fixed-Fee Pricing, Partner Resources

Cloud backup and data recovery company Intronis has had a busy week, announcing a new platform, fixed-fee pricing model and partner enablement resources.

First, the company unveiled the new Intronis ECHOplatform, which creates a single solution for data recovery and cloud backup, with a host of services including imaging, VMware and Hyper-V, SQL and Exchange backup, BMR, and file sync and share. It was announced in conjunction with Autotask Community Live this week in Hollywood, Fla.

The solutions themselves aren't new to Intronis, Neal Bradbury, Intronis vice president of channel development, said, but the ECHOplatform unites them under a single solution for simplified delivery, integration and management. While the single-pane-of-glass solution makes it easier for solution providers, it also allows Intronis to accelerate technologies to market.

"It's also setting the stage for us going forward, allowing us to add technologies to the platform," Bradbury said.

[Related: Symantec Global Channel Chief Departs For Cloud Backup, Recovery Startup ]

On top of its ECHOplatform, Intronis announced it was overhauling its pricing model for cloud backup storage, calling it the Intronis U2 Plan. Instead of paying by the Gigabyte, partners will pay a monthly flat fee for unlimited cloud storage for all of their clients.

Bradbury said that vendors have always told partners to bundle solutions as a best practice, but per-gigabyte pricing wasn't aligned in a way to allow them to do that. Per-gigabyte pricing oftentimes means small businesses are holding back from backing up the information they should because it is price-prohibitive, Bradbury said.

"Partners and small business aren’t backing up everything they should because they're worried about the pricing ... we think that's totally wrong," Bradbury said. "We're excited. We really hope that, we know that, this will change the way that MSPs market and sell their data protection solutions to the small business," he continued.

Finally, Intronis announced it was backing up the technology and new pricing model with a suite of partner enablement resources. A Partner Toolkit will support partners with marketing materials, sales tips, and technical and onboarding instructions. Intronis also is adding more onboarding materials, including step-by-step instructions, Intronis University to certify partners, and an updated knowledge base for documentation, branding, troubleshooting and more.

Larry Phelps, vice president of sales at Minneapolis-based Solbrekk, said that he started using Intronis after going through two other backup vendors with which he was not satisfied. He said that Intronis appealed to him because it was easy to use, nonproprietary, open architecture and with an established vendor ready for a long-term relationship.

Out of the new announcements from the company, Phelps said that the pricing model was the most compelling. He said that he no longer has to work in complex spreadsheets to calculate how much storage each client is taking and attempt to predict how many clients he will have down the road.

"It was a nightmare. It was like predicting if the stock market was going to go up and down. We needed something simple," Phelps said, which is why the new Intronis pricing model appealed to him.

While Phelps said that he hasn't changed his pricing yet to reflect the new model, it is already making it easier for him to build backup solutions for his small business clients. It gives him an opportunity to give smaller business clients a backup solution without having to put them in a consumer-type off-site product, he said.

Down the road, Phelps said that he would like to see a file sharing option integrated into the ECHOplatform. Many of his clients, especially CPA firms, have asked him for the solution and Phelps said it would be great to have a managed file sharing system in the same system. Intronis said that file sync and share is in the works for the ECHOplatform as well as bare metal restore (BMR).

"I think that’s where they're headed and that would be a great benefits to our customers," Phelps said.

PUBLISHED JUNE 14, 2014