A healthy sports team requires more than just strong athletic talent and exceptional tactics; it takes an equally skilled team working behind the scenes to keep them safe and stable. Sports teams are just like any other business, requiring dedicated staff and a functioning and well-protected digital infrastructure. The Acronis #TeamUp program enables the leading cyber protection company to partner with managed service providers (MSPs) and professional sports teams, securing a team’s backend while offering a far reach of exposure for all parties involved.
Representatives at Acronis spoke with Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of the Red Sox, Brian Shield, and Chief Revenue Officer Josh Dinneen at MSP GreenPages.
The Red Sox have been partnering with Acronis since 2018, and GreenPages since 2022.
The Red Sox manage over 500 full-time employees, and primarily use Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud as well as Acronis Files, Acronis Snap Deploy and Acronis Advanced Backup. GreenPages employs 262 people and offers Acronis products integrated into its services for its users to take advantage of.
A home-run partnership
Data is the lifeblood of the Red Sox, Shield explained, with data primarily falling into four main areas: play, fan, video and employee info — all amounting to a massive cache of data. Protecting and storing this data required sophisticated infrastructure and solutions, so the Red Sox decided to trust Acronis with their protection needs. The Red Sox hold a minimum of 81 home games a year, and Fenway Park is also host to a myriad of other events during the year, including concerts, other sports events, and more.
At first, Shield said, the Red Sox implemented Acronis for endpoint security. Since integrating Acronis into its infrastructure, however, the team started taking advantage of other Acronis services, such as cloud and system restoration and backing up Microsoft Office files, among others. Shield praised how Acronis provides a “single pane of glass” that reduces complexity and allows the team to manage the suite in one easy-to-use agent. “It gives a real competitive advantage to our business,” Shield said.
GreenPages chose Acronis through a process, Dinneen explained, that even involved directly consulting its users before making a final decision on their cyber protection partner. The service provider noticed a growing demand for backup services among its users, prompting a search for the best provider — leading them directly to Acronis and its suite of products. “Originally, we thought it was too good to be true,” he said. When searching for a provider, the MSP found many partners that would provide a good resale value, but nothing integrated as well as Acronis, delivering cyber protection solutions to its clients the company is proud of.
The GreenPages partnership has proven to be fruitful for all parties involved. Shield cited a “significant boost” in the team’s IT performance since welcoming GreenPages into its partnership system. GreenPages provides additional non-protection services that Acronis doesn’t, as well as providing the team with specialized engineers able to troubleshoot and configure everything in its infrastructure.
Dinneen told our representatives seeing the GreenPages logo behind home plate is one of the biggest indicators of the success of the #TeamUp program, showcasing the exposure the partnership brings MSPs. GreenPages and the Red Sox, since teaming up, have attended events together, with Red Sox players regularly attending GreenPages’ events to sign autographs. This partnership offers benefits to all parties involved, highlighted in this case study and other case studies we’ve conducted since the program started. Our single-agent platform proves time after time to simplify overcomplexity and offer comprehensive backup recovery services, delivering peace of mind, and allowing our clients to keep their minds and eyes on the ball and deliver an exceptional customer experience.