Datto Holding Corp. ("Datto") announced the commercial availability of Datto Continuity for Microsoft Azure, a comprehensive Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) solution that protects MSPs and their clients' data in the public cloud in the event of malicious ransomware attacks, security breaches, and vendor outages.

Datto Continuity for Microsoft Azure is architected to leverage the secure Datto Cloud to address a critical and unmet need for MSPs--the added protection and recovery of data in the public cloud through multi-cloud replication. This comprehensive data protection, management, and streamlined recovery is delivered at a predictable cost and without the need for MSPs to piece together individual technologies or depend solely on Microsoft's data backup services.

An increasing number of Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) are opting to host their infrastructure and applications in the public cloud, with worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services forecasted to grow 23.1% in 2021 to total $332.3 billion, up from $270 billion in 2020, according to a forecast from Gartner, Inc. This has been a key growth area for MSPs as they support their clients and shift to Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) models.

Microsoft Azure has been proven to be the leading public cloud provider over other large providers for businesses in the beginning to middle-stages of public cloud adoption, such as MSPs. Azure provides reliable cloud services for building, deploying, and managing intelligent applications. While Microsoft is responsible for the security of the physical hosts, network, and data centers, its Shared Responsibility Model states that the customer is responsible to secure and protect all applications, data, and endpoints contained within Azure. In this model, MSPs carry the responsibility to ensure they have reliable business continuity solutions in place to protect their clients' workloads across on-premises servers and the public cloud.

Industry Leading Security and Continuity

Datto Continuity for Microsoft Azure performs more frequent backups than other solutions and reduces the risk of data loss or prolonged system downtime due to ransomware and public cloud outages. Further, MSPs can now eliminate single-cloud risk by having the ability to restore data from either Microsoft Azure or the immutable, private Datto Cloud as secondary system protection. With this solution, MSPs can offer their clients the scalability and efficiency of the public cloud while feeling confident their clients' cloud data is backed up and can be recovered within minutes - even if there is an Azure outage.

Designed for Growth

Purpose-built to help MSPs scale and grow their business, Datto Continuity for Microsoft Azure delivers a predictable pricing model. One easy-to-understand, flat-fee bill accounts for all associated BCDR costs - all achieved with zero egress costs for MSPs. This solution creates a durable margin opportunity, eliminates the need to estimate public cloud service costs or handle unexpected charges, and reduces the total cost of ownership for MSPs. In addition, Datto Continuity for Microsoft Azure is cloud-native to enable MSP partners to quickly scale endpoints, while providing high levels of security and reliability.

Simple User Experience

MSPs have direct access to Datto's award winning 24/7/365 support team and will no longer need to manage multiple vendors or integrate third-party technologies. The flexible turnkey solution requires minimal training and enables MSPs to manage both on-premises and cloud backup workloads from a single multi-tenant dashboard.

"The ongoing cyberwar against ransomware underscores the importance of closing the gap in security for MSPs utilizing the public cloud," said Radhesh Menon, Chief Product Officer at Datto. "We architected Datto Continuity for Microsoft Azure from the ground up with the key design goals of providing comprehensive protection and rapid recovery, and an extra layer of protection through multi-cloud replication to Datto's private cloud. In addition, Datto is able to deliver predictability on margin to bring confidence to MSPs that their time and investments in hybrid cloud protection are both secure and profitable."

Key features and benefits of Datto Continuity for Microsoft Azure include:

• Efficient deployment: Delivers fast and easy onboarding with a 3-click set-up process that enables a first backup within 15 minutes.

• Hybrid data protection: Provides data protection for both on-premises and Azure virtual machine (VM) workloads from a single portal.

• Multi-cloud replication: Eliminates single-cloud risk with secondary replication to the secure and reliable Datto Cloud for better Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) and performs backups every hour for a one-hour Recovery Point Objective (RPO).

• End-to-end protection: Ensures consistent management and protection from endpoint to server to cloud by leveraging Datto Continuity for Microsoft Azure in tandem with the Datto Unified Continuity product suite.

• Cloud Deletion Defense: Enables easy recovery of the entire dataset of backups deleted during an agent deletion or when deleting all cloud backups.

• Virtualization to the Datto Cloud: Allows MSPs to recover workloads within seconds in the event Azure has an outage.

• Automatic boot verification of backups: Validates that backups are running as expected with patented screenshot verification.

"The driving force behind our clients' desire to migrate to the public cloud is two or threefold," said Rick Topping, VP of Operations at Ceeva, Inc, an MSP in Pennsylvania and beta customer of Datto Continuity for Microsoft Azure. "Companies understand their responsibility to ensure data is available to employees at all times and realize it needs to be kept as safe and secure as possible in today's environment. Our clients sometimes find it difficult to host an on-premises system and receive the same features and functionality available with a cloud-based system. Datto Continuity for Microsoft Azure provides those capabilities. As we help our clients on their journey to the cloud, this solution gives us the same data protection and business continuity that we're used to with Datto SIRIS and provides the reliability and trust known with Datto."

Datto Continuity for Microsoft Azure is available immediately in the United States, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand through an Early Access Program that includes introductory pricing until December. Global availability with additional integrations and feature enhancements is expected by the end of 2021.