Acronis Backup Cloud Playbook

An Easy, Complete, and Safe Backup-as-a-Service Solution for Service Providers

Table of Contents

Section I: A Message to Acronis Partners 2

Section II: Industry and Market Information 4

Industry Trends 4

Market Opportunity 5

Business Drivers 6

Section III: Acronis Backup Cloud Messaging 6

Target Audience 6

Solution Descriptions for Service Providers 8

Solution Descriptions for End-user Customers 9

Key Messages 9

Key Features 11

Differentiators 13

Benefits 14

Section IV: Sales Tools for Service Providers 15

What to Listen for 15

Qualifying Questions 15

Scenarios 15

Elevator Pitch (for End-user Customer) 16

Sales Resources 16

Section I: A Message to Acronis Partners

Partners have always been a fundamental component of Acronis’ business and are the backbone of its success. Acronis values its partner network and is committed to providing the highest quality products at the best prices to help service providers create new revenue opportunities, grow their businesses, reduce churn, and continue to increase improve their brand awareness rating.

This messaging document provides partners and the Acronis sales and marketing teams with the messaging they need to successfully market and sell Acronis Backup Cloud — a proven, comprehensive, local, and cloud backup and recovery service that equips service providers with a solution that will quickly solve their customers’ data protection problems. By reading this document, you will learn:

· How Acronis Backup Cloud solves customer problems.

· How you, as a service provider, can benefit from selling Acronis Backup Cloud.

· How you can successfully market and sell Acronis Backup Cloud to your small and medium-sized (SMB) customers and prospects.

· How your customers will realize value from the service and from you as their service provider.

Why your customers want to buy a backup-as-a-service solution

SMBs face a variety of business challenges that drive them to consider cloud backup and recovery solutions.

The first challenge is cost. Cloud backup and recovery solutions are operating expenses versus on-premises solutions, which are capital expenditures. In today’s economy, it is easier to get approval for the less expensive OPEX vs CAPEX.

The SMB infrastructure is getting increasingly complex, forcing organizations to offload IT responsibilities to service providers because they cannot afford to hire the core competency in-house. This complexity is caused by:

o The growing volume of data

o Data being stored in more and more locations

o More and more devices to manage

o The access rights to backup data are too difficult to manage

Why your customers want to buy Acronis Backup Cloud

Leveraging the power of the Acronis AnyData Engine, Acronis Backup Cloud provides all the unique features offered in Acronis’ on-premise backup products without the need for the customer to invest in software, on-premise storage, and internal resources to manage the solution. These features, most of which are not available from other cloud backup service providers, include:

· The Acronis AnyData Engine — fueled by over 100 patents and includes over 100 key top-level features — backs up and restores individual files, folders, volumes, disks, or complete systems.

· Patented disk and VM image backup rapidly backs up and maintains a complete image of a disk or volume on a physical or virtual machine in one easy step.

· Acronis’ Universal Restore restores systems to different hardware or quickly recovers an entire server onto bare metal, thereby minimizing expensive downtime.

· Acronis’ active restore lets users start working before the restore is complete by copying only the files they need for fast recovery. Acronis restores the rest of the data in the background.

· Acronis application-aware restore provides database-level recovery of Microsoft® Exchange Server, Microsoft SQL Server®, and System State backup.

· Acronis Backup Cloud ensures that your customers’ data is private and secure by offering:

o 2048-bit SSL management channel encryption

o AES-256 data encryption in transit and at rest

o Acronis SSAE 16 certified, Tier-IV designed data centers in US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, Singapore, Japan, Australia, with more sites added quarterly

Why you, as a service provider, want to sell Acronis Backup Cloud

An excellent market opportunity

Cloud backup and recovery services are rapidly replacing traditional forms of disk and tape backup, particularly with SMBs. This offers a strong market opportunity for service providers to expand their portfolio, increase revenue, and reduce churn. According to Markets&Markets, the public/private cloud storage market is estimated to grow from $13.57 billion in 2014 to $56.57 billion in 2019 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 33.1 percent from 2014 to 2019. For more information on market opportunity, see page 5.

Minimal training required

Acronis Backup Cloud is designed with simplicity in mind; it is easy for your customers to use and easy for your team to sell and support. As a service provider, you will only need your employees to attend a 60 – 90-minute sales training session (which extends the information you find in this document and the Acronis Backup Cloud Sales Guide) and a two-hour training session that teaches your technical personnel how to install, customize, and manage the service.

Attractive margin opportunity

Acronis Backup Cloud enables service providers to exploit the demand in this growing market, expand their service portfolio, and create new revenue streams without large upfront investments. The price you offer your customers can be three to five times (on average) greater than the price you pay Acronis.

Reduce churn

Cloud backup is a sticky solution. Once your customer engages you to store its critical data, the customer is less inclined to look for an alternative offering. Additionally, cloud backup can be a great way to start your cloud business, and then expand with more cloud offerings from Acronis such as disaster recovery, and file sync, and share solutions for service providers.

Quick time to revenue

Acronis Backup Cloud is ready to sell and easy to deploy without requiring high-end IT knowledge and/or an expensive infrastructure. Since Acronis offers a per-use business model, you can create new revenue streams with zero-entry costs. In addition, SMBs now accept the cloud as viable and secure, but many prefer to start their cloud experience by engaging with a trusted provider. With all of this in mind, an average sales cycle should be similar to, if not shorter than, the sales cycle of your other services.

Opportunity for additional service revenues

SMBs prefer to focus on the specifics of their business and look to trusted third parties (like you) to provide them with the IT services they need, including training, client installation, and maintenance. In addition, you can bundle Acronis Backup Cloud with your other products and offerings (e.g., email, storage, and web hosting, etc.) to maximize incremental revenues.

Sales Tools

Acronis believes that it is imperative to provide advice, insight, ideas, information, and tools to its partners — anything that will help you to be successful reselling our products and services. We provide different kinds of partner tools for different kinds of partners and are committed to expanding and improving these tools.

Acronis provides Partner Sell-thru Kits, which include collateral, presentations, FAQ documents, and Quick Sales Guides. For a more complete listing of sales tools to help you sell Acronis Backup Service, see page 16.

Section II: Industry and Market Information

Industry Trends

In early 2015, Spiceworks released their State of the IT Report, where they surveyed over 1100 IT professionals. According to this report, 41 percent of those using cloud services are using it for backup and recovery. Furthermore, of the IT professionals using cloud services at organizations with less than 19 employees, 60 percent use cloud backup and recovery services. Online backup and recovery is the number one cloud service IT professionals plan to implement in the next six months.

Today, cloud technologies and improvements in connectivity can support faster, secure backup and recovery, and many SMBs find that cloud storage is a way to reduce IT costs. Businesses can now back up their data directly to the cloud without worrying about loss of data and eliminate the costs and resources associated with on-premises data protection solutions.

Market Opportunity

When it comes to new purchases for cloud-based projects, Spiceworks’ IT Budget Report states that online backup/recovery is out ahead:

· 13 percent of the global average cloud services budget is devoted to online backup and recovery.

· 14 percent of all IT pros surveyed plan to add new online backup and recovery services in 2015.

According to IDC, 37 percent of all U.S. small businesses and 72 percent of medium-sized business were currently utilizing some type of online storage service in 2014.

· Small businesses tend to use online storage service for either data protection or business continuity.

· More than 50 percent of medium-sized businesses use online storage service for data protection, generally followed by disaster recovery.

In addition, cloud backup and recovery services are rapidly replacing traditional forms of disk and tape backup, particularly with SMBs. This offers a strong market opportunity for service providers to expand their portfolio, increase revenues, and reduce churn.In short, SMBs are looking for local service providers that offer cloud backup and recovery that they can trust.

Business Drivers

SMBs are moving to cloud backup and recovery solutions for a variety of reasons. The following lists a sampling of the top reasons per a recent Redmond Magazine Report:

· 24 percent of organizations chose cost savings as the one primary reason to use cloud backup

· 59 percent of organizations want to eliminate a single point of failure

· 75 percent of organizations experience tape failure each year

· 64 percent of organizations want protection from natural disasters

· 62 percent of organizations want to store data in a highly secure environment

· 22 percent of organizations want to phase out legacy solutions

Section III: Acronis Backup Cloud Messaging

Target Audience

Service Providers

· Managed service providers (MSPs)

· Hosters

· Internet service providers (ISPs)

· Communications service providers (CSPs)

SMBs generally hire MSPs because they do not staff resources or the required technical expertise. MSPs can handle day-to-day IT operations on behalf of their clients, such as networking and security services, storage and disaster recovery, and email or web hosting.

Hosters and ISPs are looking for recurring revenues and many see an opportunity to add cloud backup services to their portfolio of products.

CSPs offer communications services to their customers and are interested in adding Acronis Backup Cloud to their portfolio of products.

End-user Customers

Target companies and titles

Acronis recommends that service providers target small to mid-sized businesses that do not have the IT resources to install and manage a backup solution in-house.

SoHo (1-10 employees)

· Use case: End-user responsible for backup

· Typical environment: No IT support; employees use personal computers and laptops (different operating systems)

· Typical decision maker: Business Owner

Small business (1-50 employees)

· Use case: Easy to manage backup service for one FTE or a small IT department

· Typical environment: Basic IT

· Typical decision maker: IT Manager

Medium and larger business (50-1000 employees)

· Use case: Easy implementation of hybrid protection

· Typical environment: Distributed IT, multiple remote/branch offices

· Typical decision maker: IT Manager, Backup Administrator, CIO

Users of a traditional backup solution

· Primary use case: Replace existing backup

· Typical environment: Traditional tape backup

· Typical decision maker: IT Manager, Backup Administrator, CIO

Target segments

The following SMB business segments are excellent targets for Acronis Backup Cloud. Generally, your best prospects will be those organizations that are concerned that their critical data is not protected but do not have the IT resources to manage an on-premise solution. SMBs looking to replace their existing backup solution are also good prospects.

· Oil and gas extraction

· Mining

· Utilities

· Manufacturing

· Wholesalers

· Retail trade

· Transportation services

· Government, including local, state, and federal agencies

· Telecommunications

· Information technology

· Banking and financial investments

· Insurance carriers and agents

· Construction and contractors

· Lawyers and other legal services

· Accountants

· Engineering services

· Advertising and public relations agencies

· Administrative and support services

· Health care services including hospitals, clinics, and doctor offices

· Warehousing and storage

Solution Descriptions for Service Providers

Short description (25 words): Designed exclusively for service providers to meet their customers’ needs, Acronis Backup Cloud is a proven, comprehensive, local, and cloud backup and recovery service.

Longer description (50 words): Designed exclusively for service providers to meet their customers’ needs, Acronis Backup Cloud is a proven, comprehensive, local, and cloud backup and recovery service. Easy to sell and quick to launch, Acronis Backup Cloud can strengthen your product portfolio to help you quickly attract new customers and realize incremental revenues.

Longest description: Designed exclusively for service providers to meet their customers’ needs, Acronis Backup Cloud is a proven, comprehensive, local, and cloud backup and recovery service. Easy to sell and quick to launch, Acronis Backup Cloud can strengthen your product portfolio to help you quickly attract new customers and realize incremental revenues.

Leveraging the power of the Acronis AnyData Engine, Acronis Backup Cloud backs up data from any source, stores data locally, in your private cloud, in a third-party cloud, or in the Acronis Cloud and lets you recover to any destination and system. More specifically:

· As a service provider, you can store and manage your customers’ backups in an Acronis (Cloud) Data Center and quickly roll out this turnkey solution. In this scenario, you do not need to be concerned with storage and maintenance — Acronis does everything.

· As a service provider, you can expand or implement your own cloud storage or Azure, Amazon S3, and other third-party storage using an Acronis-hosted management console. This alleviates concerns about data leaks in public clouds and gives you the opportunity to sell additional storage.

· As a service provider, you can manage and store your customers’ backups in your own cloud storage or Microsoft Azure, Amazon S3, and other third-party storage.

The service supports up to three “brand-able” channel levels with unlimited customers on every channel. It also supports the signing up process for partners and customers, fully automates the deployment and management of product features, and contains usage tracking and reports on all channel levels.

Acronis Backup Cloud can be white-labeled or co-branded into your existing SaaS offerings and offers a scalable, per-use business model with zero entry costs, allowing you to compete with the largest cloud storage providers. Your customers can back up and recover data, files, or an entire system, recover a system to bare metal, and encrypt data. Acronis Backup Cloud is also an ideal choice for any organization looking to transition from tape backup solutions.