Executive Summary

Acronis, a company known for its integrated cyber protection solutions, has introduced Acronis Archival Storage. This new service provides a long-term, S3-compatible object storage solution designed as a 'cold' storage tier for data that must be retained for compliance or archival purposes but is not frequently accessed. The service is built for the channel, specifically targeting Managed Service Providers (MSPs) who can now offer a complete data lifecycle management solution to their SMB customers. A key differentiator is its predictable pricing model, which eliminates the variable egress and API call fees common to hyperscale public clouds. The underlying infrastructure is powered by Seagate Lyve Cloud, ensuring high durability and global availability.

Technical and Policy Details

Acronis Archival Storage is designed to meet the growing need for long-term data retention driven by regulatory compliance and business policy.

Key Features

• S3-Compatibility: The service uses the widely adopted S3 API, ensuring broad compatibility with a vast ecosystem of applications and tools that can write to object storage.
• Predictable Pricing: The pricing structure is based purely on the amount of storage consumed, with no fees for data egress (retrieval) or API calls. This allows MSPs to offer fixed-price archival services to their clients with predictable margins.
• Integration with Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud: The service is managed and billed through the same console MSPs already use for backup, disaster recovery, and security services, providing a single-pane-of-glass experience.
• Compliance and Security: To meet regulatory requirements, the service includes write-once, read-many (WORM) immutability, which prevents data from being altered or deleted for a specified period. Data is also encrypted both in transit and at rest.
• Performance and Durability: Built on Seagate Lyve Cloud, the service promises 11 nines (99.999999999%) of data durability and 99.5% availability, with data retrieval times in the milliseconds.

Target Audience and Use Cases

The primary audience is Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and their Small-to-Medium Business (SMB) customers.

Common use cases include:

• Regulatory Compliance: Storing financial records, healthcare data (HIPAA), or legal documents for mandated retention periods (e.g., 7+ years).
• Data Archiving: Moving large volumes of old project files, completed video projects, or other unstructured data off expensive primary storage.
• Alternative to Tape: Replacing slow, cumbersome, and manually intensive tape backup solutions with a more modern, searchable, and accessible cloud archive.

Impact Assessment

• For MSPs: The solution enables MSPs to expand their service offerings and capture more of their clients' IT spend. The predictable pricing model is a major selling point, as it de-risks their service offerings compared to using hyperscale cloud archives where egress fees can be unpredictable and costly.
• For SMBs: It provides an enterprise-grade, compliant archival solution that is both cost-effective and easy to manage through their existing MSP relationship.
• For the Market: This launch puts pressure on both legacy tape vendors and public cloud providers. It challenges the complex pricing models of hyperscalers and offers a more agile alternative to tape. It highlights a growing trend of specialized cloud services tailored to the specific needs of the MSP channel.

Implementation

MSPs can enable Acronis Archival Storage directly within their Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud console. They can then configure backup and archiving policies to automatically tier older data from 'hot' backup storage to the 'cold' archival tier based on rules such as data age or type. The process is designed to be seamless, with all data management and recovery operations handled through the unified Acronis platform.