French data protection supplier Acronis is making a big move into enterprise data protection with a comprehensive new software release, Acronis 12, a beefed-up marketing team, and a profile-raising one race-only sponsorship deal with the Toro Rosso Formula 1 Grands Prix team.

The new SW “takes 35.6 minutes to backup a 180GB virtual machine … This makes Acronis Backup 12 the fastest data protection technology in the world.”

Acronis says its v12 SW is also the only product “that gives businesses complete control over the location of their data, systems, and backups, including best-in-class capabilities for protecting virtual environments.” (Take that Veeam!)

The idea is that backup silos are proliferating like twitter hashtags and what businesses need is an all-in-one scheme to protect their data on whichever computer system it resides. Acronis 12 can backup data on users’ end-point devices, on-premises Windows and Mac PCs and notebooks, physical and virtual servers, and public cloud app instances, and do so from one web pane of glass.

It seems as if it’s trying to be both best-of-breed and comprehensive.

The Acronis 12 release provides;

• Virtual Host Backup – backs up VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V hosts (not just VMs) and recovers them to dissimilar hardware
• Unified Web Console – backing up and managing all individual workload environments, including on-premises and cloud, physical systems, virtual hosts and machines, and cloud workloads, from a single place on any device
• Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) in 15 seconds or less with Acronis Instant Restore by running any physical or virtual Windows or Linux system backup as a VMware or Hyper-V virtual machine
• Cloud workload support – back up on-premises physical and virtual systems, Microsoft Azure VMs and Amazon EC2 instances
• Protect Windows PCs and tablets, Macs, iPads, and iPhones, and any Android device “to protect every endpoint of every user”

Acrons says its v12 will support the coming Windows Server 2016, including Hyper-V with resilient change tracking (RCT).

Recovery options include;

• File, email, and database recovery
• System recovery – including bare-metal recovery, active restore, instant restore, and vmFlashBack
• Cloud disaster recovery (and physical data shipment)

The 15-second recovery is claimed to be twice the speed of the closest (unidentified) competitor.

Acronis Backup 12 is available through a local Acronis partner. Find out more about the product and check out a free trial here. ®

Originally posted The Register 20 July 2016