Symantec takes backup and recovery leap

Symantec Corp. today announced new products and services aimed at helping customers better manage, secure and recover their data in Windows systems environments.

Released a week before Microsoft’s official launch of Windows Server 2008, Symantec spokespeople said the new solutions present plenty of revenue opportunities for partners.

Launching today are Symantec’s Solutions for Windows, Backup Exec 12 for Windows Servers, Backup Exec System Recovery 8, and two small and mid-sized business software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings, including Symantec’s Online Backup and Symantec Online Storage for Backup Exec solutions.

Brian Greene, senior product manager of data management group at Symantec, said with the company’s acquisitions over the years, it made sense for Symantec to offer both its partners and customers more choice through integration capabilities.

“We’re adding integration with Enterprise Vault, Endpoint Protection, and ThreatCon products to help channel partners cross sell and up sell capabilities across the board with a single vendor,” Greene said. “This has created new selling opportunities for them.”

Randy Cochran, vice-president of channel sales at Symantec, said the company’s go-to-market strategy is through its channel community, which he says, is currently made up of over 15,000 partners in the Americas.

“We want to leverage our entire channel,” Cochran said. “Symantec’s channel is our biggest asset and we reach our customers with the help of our channel partners.”

Symantec Solutions for Windows is an enterprise-ready portfolio for SMEs that help users to manage, secure, recover and automate their Windows processes and environments.

Included in Symantec’s solution portfolio is Symantec Backup Exec 12 for Windows Servers, which is a backup and recovery platform solution that’s certified for Windows Servers including, Server 2008. It also offers data security and disk-to-disk-to-tape protection for workstations, file servers and Windows Servers. Its integration with existing Symantec products, Greene said, including Enterprise Vault, Endpoint Protection and Symantec Protection Network offers its users enhanced security and data protection.

“Backup Exec 12 is what we call, the gold standard in Windows data protection because it’s certified and optimized to support Windows Server,” Greene said. “Being certified is a big deal and the channel needs to understand that being compatible is simply not good enough anymore.”

Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 8 is a standalone solution is designed for Windows-centric businesses in the 100 to 1,000 employee business sized-range. It offers users offsite protection capabilities by automatically copying recovery points to an FTP or external hard drive or secondary disk location. Greene said this solution is especially useful in the event of a disaster because it can also do a full backup on a different, dissimilar hardware machine or virtual environment.

“Prior to introducing this, customers would often do a full system backup on the exact same machine,” Greene said. “Not too many customers have an extra machine lying around that’s exactly the same. Now they can do full backups on different machines and can later recover that completely on another system if need be.”

Partners should expect to see anywhere between 10 to 18 per cent margins on Backup Exec and Backup Exec System Recovery solutions, Cochran said. He also said partners can make more money through cross selling products by speaking to their customers about Symantec’s integration capabilities.

Rounding out Symantec’s new announcements are its two SaaS offerings which also cater to SMBs with an Online Backup and Online Storage for Backup Exec solutions.

Launching under the Symantec Protection Network, Symantec Online Backup is a Web-based backup and recovery solution while Online Storage for Backup Exec offers onsite and offsite data protection.

Chris Schin, director of product management at Symantec, said that rather than customers having to go to a service provider to buy and maintain the service, they can now go to Symantec for this subscription-based SaaS offering.

“We’re launching this as a simplified channel model to let partners take advantage of what we’ve built,” Schin said. “We manage the billing here and we can also provide online support and audit trails, which also builds recurring revenue streams for partners.”

Cochran said Symantec partners need to continue to make investments in themselves by taking advantage of the company’s products and training courses.

“We’re excited about these new products and they’re a great offering for our partners that they will surely have a heck of a lot of fun in selling,” Cochran said.

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Maxine Cheung
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