Cloud Hosting

This is the fourth in a series of tips on cloud data backup for VARs and managed service providers (MSPs). The first piece, "

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For many MSPs that have gone so far as to manage cloud backup services -- implementing and providing operational support -- the next step is to actually provide the cloud itself. Moving to the hosting model makes sense because it allows them to increase their involvement (value-add) and revenue potential with their customer bases. At one point this meant standing up a data center to support the cloud backup software, but now MSPs can host these backup clouds in a Software as a Service (SaaS) configuration with such companies as Amazon or Rackspace. And making the jump is now easier thanks to the backup cloud infrastructure vendors, many of which allow MSPs to transition their current customers into their own clouds transparently.

There is an increasing number of backup infrastructure vendors, hardware and/or software available to the MSP that wants to take this step. Some of these vendors' products are big in the private cloud space, providing backup infrastructure for large companies, but the products can also be used as the basis for a cloud backup service. Since this tip is focused on MSPs, many of which are moving up from selling and managing cloud services to hosting the infrastructure itself, our focal point here is in the area of hosted MSP backup solutions.

We'll use two vendors that were featured in the last article in this series, Asigra Inc. and Ctera Networks Ltd., as examples of the solutions in this space. Both have established a business with MSPs managing a cloud backup service for their customers and can support those MSPs that want to host their own clouds as well.

Resembling the managed services cloud backup model, in an MSP-hosted scenario, a hybrid cloud appliance (hardware or software) is installed at the customer's location with the MSP providing the same monitoring and management of backups from a central location. The only differences between the two models are where the data is actually stored and who runs that cloud.

The hybrid cloud model gives the end-user company local backups and restores and an efficient, cost-effective process for the transfer of backed-up data sets to the cloud. The MSP can still provide day-to-day operational support and troubleshooting, as well as expansion, updates and configuration management of the backup infrastructure.

Hosting allows MSPs to increase their margins, providing the same services as they did when they were reselling to their end-user customers.

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MSP backup solutions for hosting cloud backup services