VMworld Europe: resellers are changing how they do business due to virtualisation adoption

Acronis launches bi-annual partner survey

SCHAFFHAUSEN, Switzerland, October 18, 2011 - Acronis Inc., a leading provider of disaster recovery and data protection solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments, today announced the findings of its first EMEA Partner survey.

The survey results reveal our EMEA partners’ feedback on their experience of working with Acronis and their vision for SMB technology trends over the coming year. More than 1,200 of Acronis’ EMEA partners across 11 countries completed the survey in July and August 2011.

One of the key findings is that the SMB storage software channel sees virtualisation as the future of their businesses, ranking virtualisation’s potential for cost cutting and efficiency above physical backup, the cloud and deduplication. As a result of cloud and virtualisation, 49% of Acronis partners have shifted their business model to become service providers and over a third (35%) are now selling more software licenses than boxes.

There are, however, further opportunities for the channel to embrace new technologies, with only a third (31%) currently seeing the migration to virtualisation and cloud as presenting further business opportunities for them.

Laurent Dedenis, President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing at Acronis, “In order to better address the channels’ needs, we decided to run a barometer to analyse our partner’s satisfaction, perception and vision. We will benchmark our community’s satisfaction with the recently introduced Acronis Global Partner Programme every six months moving forward to make improvements for them.”

“In addition, virtualisation is a key strategic focus for us this year and we want to arm our channel with the products, tools and support they need to help their customers implement virtualisation solutions. This year we have launched both Acronis^® vmProtect^TM 6 and Acronis Backup & Recovery^® 11 Virtual Edition. We are one of the only backup and recovery companies following a true partner model for the adoption of virtualisation.”

Top 3 findings:

1. Virtualisation is the top technology to help companies cut IT costs: Acronis continues its commitment to the virtualisation market in order to arm its channel with information, plus support them as their business models change
2. Acronis partners are satisfied: More than three quarters (76%) indicated they are satisfied or very satisfied with Acronis. EMEA Partners expressed appreciation of tools made available to them (such as the Acronis Partner Portal, training programmes and free NFRs) in addition to joint communication activities (roadshows, events, customer case studies)
3. When selecting a backup and recovery solution, the main priority for channel partners is technical support: Acronis was one of the first backup and recovery providers on the market to provide free and unlimited technical support to its channel partners, regardless of the partners’ level

Acronis commitments to its partners:

• Improve partners’ satisfaction Fully implementing the new Global Acronis Partner Programme which was announced in June
• Educate the market Support our partners’ business model changes due to new technology adoption and provide best of breed technology for virtualisation backup

Resources:

• Acronis unveils new channel partner programme
• Full report findings

About Acronis:

Acronis unifies data protection and cybersecurity to deliver integrated, automated cyber protection that solves the safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity, and security (SAPAS) challenges of the modern digital world. With flexible deployment models that fit the demands of service providers and IT professionals, Acronis provides superior cyber protection for data, applications, and systems with innovative next-generation antivirus, backup, disaster recovery, and endpoint protection management solutions. With award-winning AI-based antimalware and blockchain-based data authentication technologies, Acronis protects any environment - from cloud to hybrid to on-premises - at a low and predictable cost.

Founded in Singapore in 2003 and incorporated in Switzerland in 2008, Acronis now has more than 1,500 employees in 33 locations in 18 countries. Its solutions are trusted by more than 5.5 million home users and 500,000 companies, including 100% of the Fortune 1000, and top-tier professional sports teams. Acronis products are available through 50,000 partners and service providers in over 150 countries in more than 40 languages.

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