Acronis eyes enterprise market, Australian datacentre

Data-protection software vendor Acronis is hoping the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend will give it more opportunities to engage enterprise clients in Australia, and is currently scouting datacentres in the country to host its cloud backup offerings locally.

With a strong presence in the consumer and SMB space, Acronis is making a global push into the enterprise market. Earlier in the year, the vendor appointed Alan Laing as the vice-president of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) to drive enterprise sales in those regions.

Acronis Australia general manager Andy Purvis, who joined the company in August, told ZDNet that the vendor is looking to do the same in Australia, with a strategy that includes using BYOD to open up discussions with enterprise customers.

Currently, only around 5 percent to 10 percent of Acronis' revenue comes from the enterprise segment, he said.

"We want to talk to CIOs about how they are going to manage the influx of BYOD, since statistics tell us we are on average a 2.7-device-per-person population, and that will rise significantly in the next couple of years," Purvis said. "From an enterprise perspective, at the top of business agendas are questions around how to protect corporate data, how to manage the data, and who has access to data on personal devices.

"We think that is a problem CIOs will need to be addressing."

The vendor's recent acquisition of GroupLogic plays a huge part in that strategy to use BYOD as a segue into enterprises. GroupLogic creates software that allows for secure corporate file access and sharing on multiple devices. Acronis is in the process of integrating the company's products into its own portfolio.

The ultimate goal for Acronis is to become the fastest-growing software company and a market leader for all data protection and storage optimisation in virtual environments and in the cloud, Purvis said. This will include forging and strengthening relationships with companies like VMware, Red Hat, Oracle, and any company that is heavily focused on the virtualisation space.

The vendor is taking this goal seriously, and is looking to begin hosting its online data backup offering in Australia to accommodate for local clients that prefer to host their contents onshore. Acronis only hosts data in its European and US datacentres at the moment.

"We are talking to a number of Australian datacentres about this," Purvis said, although he was unable to give any details about which companies Acronis is in talks with.

Purvis hopes to be able to make an announcement on this in early 2013.