Biodata joins forces with Acronis®

SCHAFFHAUSEN, Switzerland, 26 May, 2010 - Acronis, a leading provider of onsite and offsite backup, disaster recovery and security solutions, today announced a non-exclusive agreement with Biodata across South Africa. The value-added distributor will provide the vendor's portfolio of disaster recovery products that combine data deduplication, enhanced support for virtual environments, and centralised management features.

With a background primarily focused on security solutions, Biodata is embarking on the partnership with Acronis to extend its reach into the overarching data protection and information management field. Biodata will provide the Acronis® Backup & Recovery 10™ portfolio.

"Major market indicators point towards the fact that DR and security are increasingly converging into the data protection field. At their core, both DR and security are focused on information protection. Whether a file is deleted, corrupted or infected, the user is still impacted. The user's key concern is if they experience an issue, how they can quickly gain access again to their information," explains Jan De Lange, Managing Director at Biodata.

"With companies increasingly incorporating DR into their security budgets, we were seeking to add a backup and recovery vendor to our portfolio to offer a more complete package to our partners."

After thorough market analysis, Biodata concluded that Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 offers the best combination of ease of use and extensive product functionality, married with an affordable price point.

"South Africa is an important market for Acronis and we absolutely believe that Biodata is the right partner to propel our growth in this region. In addition, Biodata's commitment to training and educating its partners, combined with the consultation that they provide end users, is the perfect match to the dedication which we provide to our channel partners," concludes Laurent Dedenis, Executive Vice President EMEA, at Acronis.

Biodata will also be Acronis' chosen partner in South Africa for the vendor's recently launched Acronis Academy training and certification programme. Acronis Academy is a professional education programme aiming at providing in-depth technical and sales training for channel partners and end users. Biodata will be offering training sessions later this year using its on-site training facilities. Details will be announced at a later date.

Acronis' latest partnership with Biodata will complement agreements with existing distribution partners in South Africa.

For more information, please visit http://www.biodata.co.za

Biodata is a distributor of a wide range of best-of-breed IT Security Solutions. Highly specialised and experienced staff as well as a network of skilled channel partners are dedicated to protect and to add value to your IT infrastructure.

The client base of Biodata IT South Africa (Pty) Ltd comprises over 200 leading organisations in the financial, health care, government and industrial sector based in countries of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Acronis is a leading provider of onsite and offsite backup, disaster recovery and security solutions. Its patented disk imaging and management technology enables corporations and individuals to protect digital assets in physical and virtual environments. With Acronis' backup, recovery, server consolidation and virtualization migration software, users protect their digital information, maintain business continuity and reduce downtime. Acronis software is sold in more than 180 countries and available in 13 languages. For additional information, please visit www.acronis.eu . Follow Acronis on Twitter: http://twitter.com/acronis.