Asigra's 'Half Of' Program: Promising Data Protection That Costs Half Of What Customers Now Pay

Cloud data protection specialist Asigra this week plans to unveil a program for partners that lets them guarantee to customers a 50 percent reduction in what they are currently paying for their on-premises or cloud-based data protection.

The new program, officially known as the Partner Acceleration Program but referred inside Asigra as the "Half Of" program, only has a couple of exceptions, said Eran Farajun, executive vice president of the Toronto-based vendor.

"It will not apply to open-source free products," Farajun told CRN. "Half of free is still free. And it does not apply to existing Asigra customers. If they are already using Asigra, they are already using Asigra."

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Backup-as-a-Service has become a mainstream offering and is something that Asigra has been offering profitably for years, Farajun said. And it is a fast-growing business. "We wanted to look at how we can help partners get more market share and accelerate their growth," he said.

The Asigra Partner Acceleration Program is quite simple, Farajun said.

"We ask, what are you running now, and we say we'll do it for half of the cost of the existing technology," he said.

Asigra has already started working with partners to close "half of" deals. One channel partner has a customer with 65 virtual machines paying about $8,000 per year, and Asigra is working with the partner to cut it to $4,000, Farajun said. "This lets the customer invest in other areas, or pocket the difference," he said.

Farajun declined to identify the vendor in that specific instance. "I can say it is a leading virtual data protection vendor," he said.

There is no real-time limit to the contracts, meaning customers can sign subscriptions of any length to continue receiving the "half of" price, Farajun said.

"We're not saying when the customer has to get back to market rates," he said. "We don't want to state an end date at this point. It depends on how long the customer signs the agreement for. If they want to sign a 10-year contract, why not? Although in 10 years, the technology and pricing will change."

The Asigra Partner Acceleration Program is available until further notice, Farajun said.

Farajun said Asigra is not concerned that the program will lead to the company taking a loss. "We look at the law of large numbers," he said. "Some will not be profitable, but most will."

The Asigra program comes just in time for what will likely be an exciting 2018 for data protection, said Brian Trudeau, vice president of hosting services at Centre Technologies, a Houston-based solution provider and MSP and Asigra channel partner.

"We expect to see a lot of demand for improved backup technologies," Trudeau told CRN. "A lot of people still are not really thinking about backups, and a lot don't have a good strategy. Even in cloud environments, people don't realize the need for good backups. They need to understand recovery points, compliance issues, and whether or not to encrypt."

Offering customers the Asigra data protection technology at half the price of what they are currently using is hopefully enough to bring customers to the table to talk about their backup strategies, Trudeau said.

"We can talk about their needs and requirements, and make sure what they have fits what they need at the right price point," he said. "Backup conversations are often on the back burner. But as storage grows, and it only grows, the economics are important. Hopefully this is enough to get their attention."