21 November 2012
Press release

Cloud and virtualisation is turning resellers into service providers, claims Acronis survey

Resellers chase higher margins and easy renewals through cloud and virtualisation service offerings

SCHAFFHAUSEN, Switzerland, 20 November 2012 - According to an Acronis survey* of more than 1,100 storage software resellers across Europe, demand for cloud and virtualisation solutions is encouraging a growing number of resellers to evolve into service providers.

Close to half (43%) of the resellers surveyed claim that cloud and virtualisation are the catalysts for changing their current business model to become more of a service provider in the future. Already, almost one in five (18%) resellers are offering white label cloud services to their customers and the survey findings suggest this number will rise.

Virtualisation has become ubiquitous with the vast majority (90%) of resellers claiming to have virtualised some part of their customer's infrastructure. Over a quarter (26%) of resellers believe that services migrating customers from physical to virtual to cloud environments deliver better margins.

According to nearly a third (30%) of those surveyed, the strong attraction of cloud services lies in the fact that it represents a great renewals business. Meanwhile, 36% are attributing the fact that they're selling more licences and fewer boxes due to growing demand for cloud and virtualisation solutions.

Alan Laing, VP EMEA, Acronis, said: "Wrapping services around cloud and virtualisation is clearly an attractive proposition. It's a business model that makes a great deal of sense for savvy resellers who want to seize an opportunity to offer high margin services and low-touch renewals fees. Cloud and virtualisation are rapidly transforming the technology landscape, and resellers must evolve if they want to remain competitive and stay ahead."

Chris Roche, Managing Director of ACUTEC Limited said: "The economic downturn has increased pressure to cut costs and deliver greater value from an IT investment. As a result, customers are moving more quickly to embrace strategies that meet these requirements. Cloud and virtualisation rank amongst the top technologies to optimise almost any organisations server and storage optimisation strategy, and we're evolving our business model to capitalise on this revolution."

* The survey is an annual barometer of Acronis' partner's perceptions and vision of market trends. Over 1,100 Acronis EMEA partners across 10 European countries, including Germany, France, UK, Italy, and Netherlands were surveyed in March 2012.




About Acronis:

Acronis is a global cyber protection company that provides natively integrated cybersecurity, data protection, and endpoint management for managed service providers (MSPs), small and medium businesses (SMBs), and enterprise IT departments. Acronis solutions are highly efficient and designed to identify, prevent, detect, respond, remediate, and recover from modern cyberthreats with minimal downtime, ensuring data integrity and business continuity. Acronis offers the most comprehensive security solution on the market for MSPs with its unique ability to meet the needs of diverse and distributed IT environments.

A Swiss company founded in Singapore in 2003, Acronis has 15 offices worldwide and employees in 50+ countries. Acronis Cyber Protect is available in 26 languages in 150 countries and is used by over 20,000 service providers to protect over 750,000 businesses. Learn more at www.acronis.com.
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