Dimension Data Adds Cloud Backup to Its Solutions Portfolio

By Miguel Leiva-Gomez
TMCnet Contributor

As cloud adoption trends upwards, providers are stepping up their game by adding backup to the list of solutions they offer to their users. This tendency is mostly seen in services that already offer storage, in order to add the option for companies to rely on their services for business continuity.

Dimension Data (News - Alert), a provider of cloud business services through a highly-versatile set of cloud offerings, has recently made such a move by implementing cloud-based backup in its already-established CaaS (computing-as-a-service) platform. Come October, its CaaS customers will see this option available in their panels. The announcement coincided with Backupify and Nasuni's (News - Alert) introduction of cross-cloud backup services.

According to Mark Peters, an analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group, cloud backup presents a new layer of protection in the cloud storage service paradigm. Outsourcing the whole process of backing up important data could give enterprises new ways to cut costs and operate more efficiently, which is one of the motivations behind moving to the cloud, he adds.

The Dimension CaaS gives enterprises a whole lot of flexibility, hosting things from applications, to data, to networks. These services have a wide range of configurations, which give each customer the ability to personalize the experience, according to Keao Caindec, CMO of Dimension Data. Nearly 40 percent of Dimension's customer base uses its services to host applications on the cloud, which includes using software-as-a-service (SaaS (News - Alert)) and other enterprise applications that run inside the enterprise.

Dimension's backup service will come in three different packages: Cloud Backup Essentials, which lets customers backup and restore files and folders; Cloud Backup Advanced, which includes all of the previous package's perks plus system state backups; and Cloud Backup Enterprise, which backs up and restores apps hosted on the CaaS on top of everything else.