Asigra Inc., the leading cloud backup and recovery software provider, today announced the Asigra Hybrid Cloud Backup^TM and Recovery platform. The ninth generation Asigra platform brings transformational backup architecture, allowing users to outsource backup to a public cloud, build a private cloud or select a hybrid of the two models. The latest generation offering brings industry firsts in automation, security and efficiency to reduce IT resources spent on mundane backup jobs, allowing redirection of those resources toward more strategic initiatives.

Traditional approaches to SMB and enterprise backup have not kept up with the exponential data growth, variances in information value and complexities within the IT environment as organizations seek to do more with less. Instead, there has been an unfortunate waste in brainpower and precious resources on backup and recovery when it should be a routine task in today's cloud computing era.

Asigra now allows users to leverage the public cloud, build their own private cloud or integrate both into a hybrid data protection model, providing the flexibility to alternate between the two approaches for fast onsite and reliable offsite recovery. Asigra does not require a choice between whether to exclusively manage the entire company backup estate or completely outsource it to a trusted cloud services provider. Asigra allows easy migration of backup data from the internal data center to a cloud service provider's facility or vice-versa using an integrated data migration tool, avoiding having to reinstall the backup and recovery software. As backup strategies change, whether a user elects to retain the custody of data or outsource it to a trusted service provider, Asigra ensures total user control over backup data.

"Asigra continues to show vision as a next generation backup and recovery software provider with its latest platform, optimized for cloud computing," said Lauren Whitehouse, analyst for the Enterprise Strategy Group. "Asigra oozes optimization, from its agentless approach, built-in data deduplication and lifecycle management, and standard features such as continuous protection and replication to the flexibility in deploying the solution. Asigra allows users to capture, ingest and store less data, effectively reducing the amount of storage hardware and management overhead required to deploy and maintain high levels of data protection."

Asigra Hybrid Cloud Backup and Recovery ingests less data by eliminating non-essential and persistent data at the source and includes tools that allow users to analyze the entire concentration of data on the network for the generation of reports that identify storage inefficiencies like stale or redundant data. The backup and recovery offering provides a smart and affordable approach to backup transformation, helping customers to buy less, manage less, and maintain less - it is a multi-site license and does not require any agents to be purchased or installed on the existing or newly added systems under protection.  Instead, Asigra reaches out over the network to perform agentless backup of all leading physical and virtual operating systems, applications, and databases, using industry standard protocols and programming interfaces.

"With more than 85 locations to protect, our challenge was the consolidation of backup and recovery operations across a large number of geographically dispersed sites," said Grahame McKenzie, director, IT Infrastructure and Administration, Crawford and Company (Canada) Inc. "With its single-screen management and architecture designed for centralized backup and recovery, Asigra has allowed us to refocus our resources on more strategic projects by eliminating the time, expense and risk of traditional data protection."

Industry Leadership in Secure Cloud Backup
Asigra's Hybrid Cloud Backup and Recovery platform is the first backup and recovery software to receive FIPS 140 NIST certification. Whether experiencing the benefits of Asigra in a public or private cloud, organizations that are extremely security conscious can take advantage of the new password rotation feature that provides the option of automatically generating and changing passwords at random for specific user accounts so unauthorized persons cannot access the account or the data. These new security features make Asigra Hybrid Cloud Backup and Recovery the most secure data protection platform available today.

"According to research by IDC, organizations are adopting cloud computing on a widespread basis which is a trend expected to continue over the next five years," said Brad Nisbet, program manager for storage and data management services at IDC. "In line with the advantages of cloud computing, Asigra's hybrid approach to cloud backup and recovery is bringing automation and efficiencies that are geared toward driving down capital and operational expenses associated with data protection across an organization."

"In a 24/7, highly connected economy, customer expectations for an always-on business environment and on-demand data availability are growing," said John Lindeman, vice president of product management at SunGard Availability Services. "Asigra Cloud Backup and Recovery delivers fast, reliable online backup services that complement SunGard's proven experience in helping organizations protect and recover data to keep up with information availability needs."

"Backup needs to change - not just incrementally but significantly - in order to capture the efficiencies of cloud computing. Asigra's Hybrid Cloud Backup and Recovery platform brings change that is transformational to help organizations refocus on more strategic IT initiatives," said Eran Farajun, executive vice president for Asigra. "Our latest generation product allows users to optimize, economize, and modernize their backup strategy by addressing today's most challenging data backup pain-points."

Availability and Pricing
Asigra Hybrid Cloud Backup is available immediately through the Asigra partner network. Organizations can opt to deploy the software directly onsite or select a service provider powered by Asigra for offsite backup or both. Pricing starts as low as $300 and scales based on environment.

About Asigra
Leading organizations reduce costs by applying cloud computing to backup and recovery with efficient, cost-effective and transformational solutions from Asigra. Customers consistently redirect savings derived from our approach to projects of higher strategic and personal value, many of which have been on-hold for a year or more. The positive business outcomes made possible from a low touch agentless architecture are revealed through Asigra's Day One ROI^TM - an exercise that delivers enormous value with little up-front investment.. The company and its products have been widely acclaimed by leading partners such as CDW, HP and SunGard and renowned Global 2000 enterprises. Asigra is headquartered in Toronto, Canada, with offices globally. For more information, visit www.RecoverYourCool.com.

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