Unitrends Goes SMB With D2D Backup Appliance
The Columbia, S.C.-based storage vendor's new DPU2000-1500 allows customers to archive data to the hot-swappable hard drives for off-site storage while providing the ability to recover archived data more quickly than if tape were used, said Sterling Wharton, executive vice president at the company.
The D2D appliance also gives smaller businesses system protection with its bare metal recovery function, which allows a server to recover from a crash in about 15 minutes without the need to load the operating system, patches, passwords and so on, Wharton said.
"For small businesses, if an Exchange Server goes down, everyone knows it," he said. "Typically, the data is backed up, but the IT staff is overworked. So they might call in an integrator who says, 'Where are the system CDs? Where are the configurations? The passwords?' It can be a day or two before they can even begin to restore the data."
Unitrends only sells through the channel, said Wharton. With the DPU2000-1500, solution providers can earn margins of 15 percent to 30 percent, depending on their relationship with the vendor. On top of that, they can typically get about 25 percent to 30 percent of the purchase price of the hardware for installation and other services, he said.
The product is available this week. List price is $9,995.
Wharton, who just recently joined Unitrends, comes from a background of working with relative startups, with experience in mergers and acquisitions and IPOs, he said. While Unitrends currently has no exit strategy, he did note that the company recently received $8 million in venture capital funding. "We are building the company for a long-term play," he said.