Altaro provides virtual machine (VM) backup for small and mid-market (SME) companies (those with less than a thousand employees) that typically cannot afford the deep and robust IT organizations that large enterprises have at their disposal. Still, these businesses must keep up with the latest IT initiatives, including the move to virtual machines (VMs) (notably using Microsoft’s Hyper-V and VMware solutions). Accompanying these moves is the need for VM storage backup to provide the necessary levels of data protection that these businesses require. And that is where Altaro comes in.
The SME VM backup market is a strong one with competitors, such as Switzerland-based Veeam and Massachusetts-based Acronis, having made strong names for themselves. However, Malta-based Altaro does not take a back seat to anyone, posting 40% year over year growth and 40,000 business customers that use company solutions, including the recently introduced Altaro VM Backup V7.
Altaro is proud of its inline deduplication introduced earlier this year that it claims supports a better deduplication ratio than any of its competitors. It also offers data backup health checker that flags any corruption noted from a failed checksum, then takes the appropriate corrective actions. Altaro’s core values include ease of use and technical support. Yes, the necessary technology has to be there, but without those two core values IT-resource-constrained SMEs would have trouble with any application. The company’s large client base and customer testimonials verify that Altaro really delivers what it promises.
But the IT resource limitations of SMEs also imply that they often need to turn to someone else for different aspects of using software products, such as installation, deployment and operation. Altaro’s partners can provide customers with as little or as much support as needed.
In addition, many SMEs are looking into the use of the cloud and turning to a managed service provider (MSP) to provide backup as a subscription service. That is why Altaro is now offering Altaro VM Backup for MSPs. An MSP can offer a business a monthly subscription to manage its backups. The MSP uses the Altaro Cloud Management Console (CMC) to manage all the necessary processes for all customers (i.e., multi-tenancy) through a single interface.
That of course means managing all backup and restores, but there are other key capabilities, as well. For planning purposes, Altaro CMC can create templates for backup schedules and retention policies. For operational purposes, the CMC can receive real-time updates and alerts that can help dictate if any action is required by the MSP CMC administrator. Moreover, the MSP can operate CMC through a Web browser, thus eliminating any need to use a VPN or to be on-site.
An MSP can currently use Microsoft Azure as the target cloud for Altaro, but the company intends to add support for Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud in the future.
Mesabi musings
Just because they are not enterprise-class in number of employees and IT resources does not mean that SMEs do not need robust and reliable data protection for their VM environments, Altaro’s VM Backup addresses this need. By emphasizing ease of use and technical support, the company makes life easier for its customers whether they do everything on their own or need help from Altaro partners or decide to do backup through a subscription model with an MS. You don’t have to be a big company to need data protection, and Altaro focuses on providing those businesses the services and solutions they require.