Companies Given More Cloud Back-up Choices

Enterprises that are on the fence with regard to using a public cloud computing service or building their own internal clouds for backup can choose both.

Asigra, a provider of cloud-based backup and recovery software to cloud service providers, is offering its software to end-user companies. Called the Asigra Hybrid Cloud Backup and Recovery platform, the software includes an integrated data migration tool to enable administrators to move data between an in-house cloud and one of the 500 an external providers that are powered by Asigra software.

“Customers that are not comfortable handing over data to service providers now can run backup internally in a private cloud,” said Eran Farajun, executive vice president at Asigra. “You can run either a private or public cloud or a hybrid of the two. You can back up your data center and hand over backup of remote sites or laptops to a service provider.”

Asigra’s cloud technology is agentless in that it does not require installation of software on the systems to be backed up. It can back up data on all leading physical and virtual operating systems, applications and databases, using industry-standard protocols and programming interfaces, according to the company.

“With more than 85 locations to protect, our challenge was the consolidation of backup and recovery operations across a large number of geographically dispersed sites,” said Grahame McKenzie, director of IT Infrastructure and Administration for Crawford and Company (Canada). “With its single-screen management and architecture designed for centralized backup and recovery, Asigra has allowed us to refocus our resources on more strategic projects by eliminating the time, expense and risk of traditional data protection.”

The software performs data deduplication, which eliminates redundant data, thereby conserving data storage capacity.

The software is FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) 140 NIST-certified and includes a password rotation feature that automatically generates and changes passwords at random for specific user accounts so unauthorized persons cannot access the account or the data.

Asigra Hybrid Cloud Backup is available immediately through the Asigra partner network. Organizations can deploy the software directly on-site or select a service provider powered by Asigra for off-site backup or both. Pricing starts at $300 per month.