This last week Byte and Switch released an article covering Asigra’s recent management hires that came on board to help Asigra expand more aggressively into the enterprise space. However, a viewpoint that crept into the article is a common but incorrect assumption that the size of the company and its clients is somehow indicative of the caliber of Asigra’s Televaulting platform.
The article rightfully asserts that Asigra has less than 75 full time employees. It also states that its Televaulting platform is most often used by managed service providers (MSPs) to provide backup and recovery services for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). Yet these two statements may leave readers with the impression that Televaulting is not really ready for the prime time challenges that it will find in enterprise environments.
The problem Asigra has developed, if you can call it a problem, is that its Televaulting platform quickly found a willing and underserved market – SMBs. SMBs are typically in dire straits when it comes to managing their backups: their network and system administrators have minimal experience managing backups, the administrators are pulled in multiple different directions and managing backup software and tapes is often a low priority and not the best use of their time.
So when MSPs showed up on these businesses’ door steps and said they could deploy agentless backup software and solve their backup problems, it sounded like a godsend. Even it didn’t work, businesses hadn’t lost anything because Asigra licenses Televaulting based upon the total backed up capacity so if Televaulting backs nothing up the cost is zero. The good news is that Asigra’s Televaulting worked so well it has contributed to the recent huge uptick in SMBs outsourcing their backups and the rise of many MSPs that use Televaulting.
I’d like to say I’ve talked to some clients who are unhappy with Asigra but I can’t. In fact, when I talk to some current users, they wonder why I am even bothering them and wasting their time. Televaulting works, case closed. Oh sure, they are some new features they would like to see but most are just ecstatic that they finally got the backup monkey off their back.
MSPs are the same way. I’ve managed hundreds of TBs of data before and I know what a pain it can be. At the last company I was at, we had 4 fulltime individuals dedicated to managing backups. Conversely, Asigra MSPs routinely manage hundreds of TBs of backup data with one part time person and have the rest of their staff making sales calls.
So why do I write all of this? Asigra has 75 employees and primarily works through MSPs now because they are like any smart business – they went into accounts that were receptive to new, innovative ideas for eliminating their backup pain. But now that Asigra has been in business for 21 years, has “hot” new technologies like CDP and deduplication embedded for free in its product and PBs of backup data under its management at its MSPs, their product isn’t just designed and ready for the enterprise, it is enterprise-proven.
Asigra’s recent management hires are not a case of getting the cart before the horse as is so often is true with new technology. In Asigra’s case, it appears it is putting the right people in place at the right time to take Asigra to enterprise companies that are experiencing the same level of pain that Asigra has helped SMBs cope with for years.