Vizioncore lays out plans to overturn backup vendors

Virtualisation software vendor Vizioncore has launched a campaign for backing virtual machines which it hopes will see the company replace entrenched backup vendors such as Symantec and CommVault.

The campaign, called Backup 2.0, is pitched at virtualisation administrators who would use the virtualisation management tools that underpin Vizioncore's application suite.

"We want to win the hearts and minds of the virtualisation administrator" not backup admins who tend to be set in their ways, said Chris Akerberg, president and chief operating officer of Vizioncore.

An upgrade in July next year to the company's flagship product, backup application vRanger, would give it the ability to carry out object-level restore as well as file-level and image-based backup.

Akerberg claimed the triple-pronged approach was a first for the industry and present a serious challenge to traditional backup vendors which sold three separate products to achieve the same result.

"As companies grow from 10 to 40 percent virtualisation at some point we can overturn the legacy of the main vendors," said Akerberg.

Vizioncore's strategy was intended to fit with VMware's push to encourage companies to virtualise 80 percent or more of their data centres.

Vizioncore was running a second campaign called "Health Check", which used its vFoglight application to determine whether a company had correctly virtualised the first 30 percent of its data centre.

Often companies could reduce the amount of storage used by virtual machines through more efficient allocation, said Akerberg.

Once companies had streamlined their virtualised machines they could then push on towards VMware's goal of 80 percent virtualisation.

"Our goal is to get to 100,000 customers globally ASAP" by riding the wave of virtualisation, said Akerberg. The company's customer base was 20,000.

Vizioncore has released free, limited versions of some of its programs including vConverter, which helped companies move between physical and virtual machines; vOptimizer Pro, which assessed the performance of a virtual environment; and vControl, a management tool.

A 30-day free trial for all products and free online training for resellers and customers was also available.

Vizioncore was selling two bundles - the Essentials, which included three applications for the price of two; and Essentials Complete, which sold six applications for the price of three.

Resellers could get over 40 points margin by selling a Vizioncore bundle with a VMware product.