Interview: AssureStor, Cloud Excellence Awards finalist
Seeking success in Cloud DR and Continuity Product of the Year
Used properly, the cloud can enable organisations to quickly respond to changing market conditions, and to experiment with new ideas, products and tools. It can be an incredibly efficient way to set up new infrastructure and platforms, or to remove the management overhead of parts of the IT estate the business would prefer not to keep in-house.
Computing's Cloud Excellence Awards recognise the very best of the UK's cloud industry, from the most innovative and compelling products and vendors, through to the top use cases from end-user firms.
This year's winners will be announced at a live awards ceremony on Thursday 22nd September at One Whitehall Place, London.
One of the finalists is AssureStor, who is on the shortlist for Cloud DR and Continuity Product of the Year.
We talked to Stephen Young, Business Development Director at AssureStor, about the work he and his colleagues have done to reach this stage.
With an engineering background and a commitment to technical excellence and customer satisfaction, Stephen has founded and grown several successful technology businesses dating back to the 1980s. His areas of specialism range from traditional IT and consultancy through to system hosting and software development, and he has in-depth experience with sectors including housing, retail and leisure and financial services.
This well-rounded experience across many disciplines, honed over several decades, has fed into AssureStor's mission and approach. The business has garnered an enviable customer satisfaction record and technical delivery statistics, plus an upward trend, with the business on track to be the leading Zerto DRaaS partner in EMEA.
Computing: Please provide some background on AssureStor for our readers.
Stephen Young: With a decade-strong track record in delivering backup and disaster recovery (DR), AssureStor's cloud-based services support businesses in achieving IT robustness and comprehensive business efficiency, with data recovery and business resilience leading the charge in an increasingly challenging technical landscape.
Delivering our technology platform through a select group of pan-European channel partners with global reach, AssureStor provides both DR-as-a-service (DRaaS) and cloud-based data backup. Our services are designed to improve an organisation's data resilience and help reduce the disruption and downtime from data loss, aligning with an organisation's strategy to mitigate risk and significantly increase levels of IT robustness.
CTG: What makes you different from other technology companies?
SY: The central objective of AssureStor's offering is to recover a business' data in the event of a disaster or major disruption, no matter the circumstances. With all roads leading to uptime, AssureStor's service offering is focused and clear-cut, with a 100% record in recovery.
In the event of data loss, we recover everything to bring a business back online with minimal disruption to day-to-day operations.
Centred on a dedicated and experienced team - both technology and business-minded - and working with proprietary technology, AssureStor's central objective of continuous uptime for partners is unrivalled. Solely dedicated to DRaaS and data protection, AssureStor is well-positioned as the leading operator in the space.
CTG: What one company achievement in the last 12 months are you most proud of?
SY: AssureStor's successful vendor relationship with partner Zerto has cemented our growth, and we now operate as the third largest Zerto cloud services provider (CSP) in EMEA. Now selected as Zerto's first worldwide aggregator partner, we are supporting the modelling of the industry's first dedicated aggregator programme, which aims to enable a significantly larger proportion of resellers to provide DRaaS to their customers.
This partnering and support has led to the largest single delivery of DRaaS to an international client and demonstrated that the DRaaS platform scales extremely well and can protect the enterprise.
CTG: What are you working on this year?
SY: Further developing our proprietary portal, to act as a springboard to securing the number one CSP spot with Zerto in EMEA. To date, the successful development of the portal has facilitated business growth, enabling us to provide a wider portfolio of services to support our channel partners - including integrations and transparency that the channel can leverage to deliver insights, further highlight growth opportunities, and ultimately support their end-users. We are continuing to build on the portal's functionality to enable channel partners to provide a higher level of service than has previously been possible.
CTG: Why are events like the Cloud Excellence Awards important to the IT industry?
SY: Recognition by industry peers is not only rewarding, but also an essential part of what we do in IT to build the best services possible. We look for excellence and performance in our partners and companies - awards serve to highlight those that are going the extra mile. What's more, physical events are even more appreciated after a long stint of not being able to meet with people face-to-face. No doubt everyone attending is looking forward to reconnecting and congratulating their peers in person.
The Cloud Excellence Awards will take place on 22nd September in London. Click here to view the shortlist and here to book your table.