Daily news Egypt interviewed Director of Acronis Middle East and Africa Guurprit Ahuja about the company’s business in the region.
Can you tell us about Acronis, its services and solutions?
Acronis is a known global leader in data protection. The company delivers businesses of all sizes a broad set of data protection solutions for both on premise and cloud deployments. The Acronis Cloud Platform delivers complete backup, disaster recovery, secure file sync and share services. Fuelled by over 50 patents, the platform is powered by the Acronis AnyData Engine – a set of unique, deep, and powerful new generation data protection technologies that capture, store, recover, control, and access any data.
Who are the target customers of Acronis? How many customers do you currently have?
Acronis solutions target enterprises and small and medium businesses (SMEs) using the Cloud technology. Acronis has a strong partner ecosystem that reaches these customers in more than 145 countries worldwide. The company has over 5,000,000 individual customers and over 500,000 business customers in a broad range of industries that Acronis has chosen to protect their business continuity. Through their award winning customer support centres, Acronis offers 24/7 assistance to their customers worldwide.
What are the financial results for Acronis in 2015?
Acronis experienced a 60% year on year (YoY) growth in the Middle East and Africa. This vibrancy has been attributed to key drivers such as its focus on market reach, signing new partners, enablement, certifications of the partners, and the end customers. The positive response can be attributed to the recent trend of IT departments to act like internal service providers focusing on Acronis subscription based licensing and also cloud initiatives using both to their benefit.
How can companies and government organisations in Egypt benefit from Acronis solutions?
Companies and government organisations in Egypt have sensitive data that needs to be protected and distributed across multiple platforms and networks while still adhering to compliance requirements and budgetary constraints. In response to the growing demand to protect data for these companies and organisations, Acronis can protect and safely share sensitive data for government agencies of all sizes and any budget. Acronis is a world leader in comprehensive data backups and ultra-fast disaster recovery. We also provide innovative system deployment tools, disk management utilities, and secure mobile file sharing solutions that allow your users access to sensitive data from anywhere in the world.
How does Acronis see the ICT market in Egypt and MENA?
Today, we are seeing a change in information and communications technology (ICT) with a scope that stretches far beyond the realm of the sector itself. No country seeking real, sustainable development and progress can hope to achieve these aims without a strong ICT sector in place to drive the necessary change.
The country is striving to achieve and develop a digital economy through the use of ICT tools to provide prosperity, freedom, and social equity for all. Egypt is taking initiatives to enable the development of a knowledge-based society and a strong digital economy relying on equitable and affordable access to knowledge, digital rights, and the development of a competitive and innovative national ICT industry.
To achieve these objectives, close attention needs to be given to the basic infrastructure, information infrastructure, and digital content; electronics design and manufacturing; community development; ICT industry programmes and initiatives; cyber security and e-Signature; and legislative and policies framework.
What are the company’s marketing and sales strategies in Egypt and MENA?
Acronis is constantly working to empower its partner eco-system to take its backup and disaster recovery solutions to enterprises and SMB’s besides engaging with the end customers and imparting trainings and certifications to them as well.
What is the company’s strategy for growth in Egypt and the MENA markets?
Our latest generation of data protection solutions has been used by many leading companies and organisations particularly the Oil and Gas segment, government agencies, and private sector groups. Our offerings have been created based on the understanding that today’s users are guided and influenced by the degree of smartness and user-friendliness of the apps and gadgets that they use. To date Acronis provides secure, reliable critical data protection across physical, virtual, and cloud environments of any scale. Our fast, flexible, and cost-effective solutions make Acronis the provider of choice across various branches of the federal governments around the world.
We believe businesses today will continue to need exceptional and customisable solutions for any system setup: physical servers, virtual machines, PCs, business-critical applications, and more. Disaster recovery and mobility solutions will remain core this year and even next year. Aside from the growing trend, Acronis also offers mobility solutions for enterprises that can help empower organisations to more efficiently access and share their content and files with colleagues, partners, customers, and other constituents. Across a wide array of mobile devices, Macs, and PCs, Acronis makes sharing and accessing corporate content and files easy and safe.
What are your expectations for the ICT market in the Middle East during 2016?
Technology today has surpassed our once predictions of the future, which demonstrates that the technology we are seeing today is better than what was predicted. We can always count on technology to change the way we live and the way our businesses operate. Consider the role of cloud in backup and disaster recovery: Companies and organisations are now starting to veer away from traditional backup and disaster recovery involving tape and disk-to-disk methodology.
A recent report from Gartner predicts that by 2016, nearly 20% of organisations will abandon traditional backup and recovery. There is a prominent role that cloud is playing in today’s backup and disaster recovery solutions.
The report further stated that between 2012 and 2016, one-third of organisations will change backup vendors due to frustration over the cost, complexity, or capability. The complexity and capabilities of a solution or product can determine how satisfied your customers will be in the long term. Additionally, more organisations are seeing the value and necessity of an IT strategy that does not just protect your data but also your applications and IT infrastructure from downtime. More enterprises are starting to implement a Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) solution.
While some IT professionals are still hesitant to move to a cloud-based disaster recovery solution because of myths underlining higher costs, recent trends reflect that many are willing to debunk those myths. For SMB’s it will be Backup to cloud and for Enterprises it could be Disaster recovery.
Who are your business partners in Egypt and the Middle East?
Acronis maintains key partnership with two leading brands, GTI Software and Networking, one of the largest IT Distributors in Spain reasons operating in the EMEA region; and DRS MEA, a distributor of broad spectrum of world-class technology products.
What is the company’s budget for research and development?
Acronis spends 18% of its revenues into research and development of its new products and technologies.
