Cape Town, 12 Mar 2020
At the end of February, Synapsys, the leading distributor of Acronis cyber protection in Africa, facilitated in-person Acronis Cyber Cloud training for its managed service provider (MSP) partners from Ghana, Malawi, Namibia and South Africa. Markus Bauer, Acronis partner technology evangelist, delivered the training, and was joined in South Africa by Maria Alexandrova, Acronis partner account manager.
The training covered Acronis Cyber Cloud functionality, an introduction to configuring Acronis Cyber Cloud and offering multi-tier, multi-tenant backup services, as well as tips, workarounds and best practice. The 85 MSP training attendees are now fully qualified Acronis Certified Engineers (ACE) Cyber Cloud, enabling them to set up, configure and troubleshoot backup using Acronis Cyber Cloud for their clients.
“Learning about a solution is great, but seeing it demonstrated brings the value much closer to home,” said Delali Tetteh, CEO of ITRUS in Ghana. “Having Markus, who clearly has had hundreds of hours of experience working with the platform, share his experiences was priceless.”
“Acronis Certified Engineer training is an absolute must. My understanding of the product, its capabilities and the roadmap for the future are abundantly clearer,” said Matthew Collison, senior technical manager at iStore Business in South Africa. “This is not only good for engineers, but a great source of valuable information for sales staff.”
“It is extremely valuable to have Acronis’ thought leaders visit and engage with the local ecosystem through training and other events. With Africa being a key growth area for Acronis and Synapsys, this heralds the start of regular ongoing partner enablement sessions in 2020,” said Peter French, managing director of Synapsys. “We anticipate more events throughout the continent, including The Acronis Cyber Foundation opening a school in South Africa.”
Introducing Acronis Cyber Protect
As well as running the ACE training, Bauer gave guests at Synapsys partner dinners in Cape Town and Johannesburg a preview of the game-changing Acronis Cyber Protect product. First announced at the Acronis Global Cyber Summit in October 2019, this is a revolutionary new approach to backup and cyber security, which acknowledges that these domains can no longer be considered separate if businesses truly want to protect their valuable data. Built around the five vectors of safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity and security (SAPAS), Acronis’ Cyber Protect works across all environments: virtual, physical, cloud and mobile.
MSPs can now easily protect customers’ infrastructure and data beyond backup, improving their SLAs, increasing revenue per customer, controlling costs and decreasing customer churn.
“While patch management and malware protection were big attraction points of Acronis Cyber Protect, the highlight was the integrated approach. A single cost for a complete solution is an MSP's dream,” said French.
Acronis Cyber Protect is currently in beta, and all the Synapsys MSPs who attended the training have been invited to test it. Commercial launch is expected at the end of March 2020.
Other comments from attendees of the training and partner dinners:
“The training was very interesting and I enjoyed the support the Synapsys team rendered throughout. The trainer was not only training, but also interactive, which made the training live.”
Michael Nyirenda, technical director at Dynamic IT Consultancy, Malawi
“The training covered details of the latest version of Acronis Cyber Cloud (8.0), complete with marketing tips and ideas to help grow our businesses. Synapsys played host to the experience and went out of their way to ensure complete comfort and satisfaction for all participants. We enjoyed two interactive days of training and insight into what is on the horizon for Acronis as far as new and exciting features go.”
Mike Edmunds, head of partner marketing at Bastion Backups, South Africa
“I found the training to be very informative and practical for our day-to-day use. I'm really looking forward to the release of the Acronis Cyber Cloud update, which will bring some great features.”
Stewart Chifamba, systems administrator at 1-grid, South Africa
“It’s evident that Synapsys and Acronis value strong relationships with their partners, which is something we at 1-grid also feel strongly about. I’m also excited to see some of the features of Acronis Cyber Cloud in action.”
Nico Visser, DevOps manager at 1-grid, South Africa
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Synapsys
Synapsys is the award-winning distributor of Acronis cyber protection solutions and services in Africa. Founded in 1997, it became one of the world’s first Acronis distributors in 2003. Today it is 100% focussed on supporting managed service providers who sell Acronis cyber protection solutions and services to their customers, helping them to maximise the benefits of this pioneering technology and way of working. Data protection and backup can no longer be considered apart from cybersecurity and Acronis’s complete, innovative cyber protection service offers full digital business protection and keeps organisations #cyberfit.
Find out more at synapsys.co.za
Acronis
Acronis sets the standard for cyber protection and hybrid cloud storage through its innovative backup, anti-ransomware, disaster recovery, storage, and enterprise file sync and share solutions. Enhanced by its artificial intelligence-based ransomware defense, blockchain-based authentication, and unique hybrid-cloud architecture, Acronis protects all data in any environment, including physical, virtual, cloud, mobile workloads, and applications. Founded in Singapore in 2003, today the company is trusted by more than 5 million consumers and 500 000 businesses worldwide, including 79 of the top 100 most valuable brands.