MSP Claranet to offer DRaaS through Zerto deal

Data back-up firm Zerto has signed a partnership with European managed service provider Claranet to offer cloud-based business continuity and disaster recovery services.

The deal will enable Claranet to offer Zerto Virtual Replication disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) to its European customers working in virtualised environments, “reducing costs and improving migration efficiency”, said Zerto.

Claranet has 37 data centres and over 5,700 customers across the UK and Europe. Extending its existing offering of hosting, networks and communications services, Claranet intends to use Zerto Virtual Replication to offer disaster recovery services. Customers of the new offering are already said to be confirmed in the UK and DACH regions.

Claranet required a product that worked in a multi-tenancy environment as well as one that worked for its virtualised customers. Zerto Virtual Replication is designed specifically for virtual environments and allows replication to be selected per virtual machine (VM). Per VM replication means MSPs such as Claranet can design solutions based on an individual customer’s requirements.

“When we looked for a DR product to offer as a service, we found that solutions tended to replicate entire environments or nothing, and this approach doesn’t work in an MSP context,” said Caroline Griffiths, senior product manager – hosting services, Claranet.

“Per VM replication allows the channel to offer DR with Zerto because we can have multiple customers on our platform all using different services tailored to their needs. But, the key factor is being able to offer IT resilience and the ability to test, all at a lower cost of entry.”

With DRaaS, a significant capital expense is converted to a predictable, low operational cost. It also eliminates any overhead or business disruption associated with testing, hiring and training a DR experienced workforce and maintaining DR.

“As one of Europe’s leading managed IT service providers, we are excited to partner with Claranet to provide superior disaster recovery capabilities to their broad customer base,” said Peter Godden, VP EMEA, Zerto. “Being 100 percent channel-focused is a critical part of Zerto’s go-to-market strategy, which has attributed to our consistent, year-over-year triple digit growth.”

@AntonySavvas