On Thursday, February 10, the global leader in cyber protection, Acronis launched its new Cyber Cloud Data Center at the Lagos Oriental Hotel, Lagos, south west , Nigeria. On the sidelines of the launch, NICHOLAS KEENE and SARA M. PINHEIRO tell Clifford Agugoesi exclusively no other firm can do cyber protection like Acronis.
CYBER ERA NG: What is the worth of the global data centre industry and which continent, in your perspective, leads the pack?
NICHOLAS KEENE/SARA M. PINHEIRO: Well, we have a project which is called Acronis Cloud Cyber Data Centres and as we demonstrated during our presentations, we have 40+ with a plan for 110 in 2 years. Our biggest friends, I would say, are North America and Europe. But if you ask in terms of investments, where it is coming, or where we are looking into, I think we both can say, that the investments are going to come to Africa, and we see a lot of focus from the entire management in Acronis that is being put in this region. Our presence, without any doubt, where we have the biggest ones, is in Europe but in terms of what is going to come, Africa, for sure, is the place to be looking at.
CEN: What are the major factors influencing your push towards Africa?
NICK/SARA: As any emerging market, there is no one specific strategy that one can follow; there is no book. So, we need to try several approaches. Right? Last year, one of the things that we decided to do, so we can start penetrating here, was to hire distributors. Our company works on a tier, on a channel model-vendor-distributor-partners. In 2021, we recruited our distributors , we trained them, we enabled them, so we can have our presence using our partners in-country. This year, we are starting to enlarge our network of data centres in these countries. And our presence. This is the first time Acronis is in Nigeria. So, the commitment from our side is growing. This is what we expect to see as well from our partners, by starting to see the investments that we put through not only about building a data centre or having them and being here, visiting, doing roadshows, by seeing that we become a more trusted brand. What we have seen is that African market likes to see the people that they are doing business with. So I think, per say, that envisions why we want to work with the people as well. Working from abroad, working from a computer, might have sounded ‘cool’ during COVID-19, but right now, it’s time for real business!
CEN: Was there any particular reason you decided to kickstart your Africa footprint with South Africa?
NICK/SARA: No. It just happened that we launched in South Africa first.
CEN: Really?
NICK/SARA: There was no specific reason. We started exploring them at the same time…Actually, the Nigerian data centre was ready before the South African; it was just a coincidence that the South African launch happened first. The Nigerian Data Centre went live first, then, South Africa. If I am not mistaken, two weeks or a week and half apart. Our partners , we started to engage them at the end of November 2021.
CEN: Give us an update on your Kenya push because you mentioned it during your presentation. What arrangements have you put in place there and when specifically are you doing your Kenya DC launch?
NICK/SARA: It is still very early project. It is a very early stage, but is something we are looking into. We are still building our network there. We are still looking for distributors in the region. It was mentioned by our CEO that the Kenya DC is a reality and, by the end of this year or early next year, it would go live!
CEN: Will it be right to describe Acronis as a major tier 111 DC player?
NICK/SARA: Acronis is not a DC player – we are a global Cyber Protection company, and in order to deliver our service around the globe, local DC’s are essential to ensure a high quality, reliable experience. Globally, we have a very large number of data centres-Europe, US, Asia, as well as Africa. These are data centres through which we offer our services. We have a large presence globally.
CEN: In which continents do you have the largest data centres?
NICK/SARA: It will be a fight between North America and Europe.
CEN: So who Wins the fight, from the perspective of you both?
NICK/SARA: Probably Europe.
CEN: In what specific ways do artificial intelligence(AI) and other technologies play a big role in Acronis’ DC operations?
NICK/SARA: Artificial intelligence is quite a big part of what we do. We have an exceptional AI team. The most applicable way how AI fits into our solutions is within cyber security solutions. We have this product as part of our Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud with an active protection, which is our anti Ransomware protection which leverages artificial intelligence. We do a lot of training in the cloud against certain threats. The most active way that AI comes into this is to protect against threats, because there is Zero Day Threats, new unknown threats, you can’t use signatures to defend against them, because they have not been seen before so no one knows what they look like. So that’s how AI fits in. That’s the most visible part. We do some other things with AI like hard drive (hdd) health monitoring, for example.
CEN: Aside from AI what other technologies do you deploy in your DC solutions provisioning?
NICK/SARA: It is a very wide technology stack… We have software defined storage, Software defined networking as part of Acronis infrastructure platform, virtualization infrastructure, as well as part of the Acronis serving infrastructure side. As part of Acronis Cyber Cloud, we use (I can’t give you specifics about the technology) we have excellent technologies in compression, compressing backups to make sure they are as small as possible. We deploy multi-tiered cloud solutions for our partners to use.
CEN: What is vendor neutrality and would you say Acronis is vendor-neutral?
NICK/SARA: Yes, we are vendor-neutral. Our solutions work with multiple vendors. Our goal is to protect data everywhere. We also try to be flexible culture-wise. In terms of language, we have around 17 languages that we support in our customer support, so we can have a deeper reach when we talk with our partners.
CEN: What is the Acronis unique selling point?
NICK/SARA: We are the only ones offering Cyber Protection. Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud. What the Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud does is that it completes cyber protection, it takes what might require 5 other vendors to get the same level of protection. We have it in one place. And it is one agent that you deploy in your system, manage from one place, one central console and that lowers the cost from both a customer and service provider perspective; they don’t need to invest in multiple platforms, they don’t need to invest in training in multiple platforms, they don’t need to support multiple platforms. With our solution, we help save cost, relieve the management burden as well as provide you the best protection possible. Everything is centralized. One of the things that my colleague mentions is that we get a lot of questions from our prospects: why are you different, why Acronis? And what he mentions is that it needs five other vendors to compete with Acronis. So imagine why you have to pay five suppliers when you can actually buy this all-in-one solution…This is our biggest selling point but also when you look at your revenue, the scalability, you can see and forecast how much your business is going to grow, because it is a very predictable model the way you go for it.
CEN: Who is Acronis competing with globally and in Africa specifically?
NICK/SARA: It is hard to say who our competitors are. Because, as we mentioned earlier, we bring a bunch of solutions in one place and so we may have competitors in the back-up space, we may have competitors in the anti-virus space, and so on.
CEN: Okay, you may look at this question from an integrated solutions provisioning perspective.
NICK/SARA: You can almost say that we have no direct competitors to our approach to the business.
CEN: That won’t be fair to competition.
NICK/SARA: No one else can do cyber protection like Acronis. We come from a holistic perspective, so it is difficult to say who our direct competitors are. We would have to go directly to subdivisions of what you want. If you want email security we will give it to you, advanced security or what have you. It differs. But if we go to the core only, like the backup, this is something that we are not positioning ourselves like this anymore, we are using only one solution and the main idea here is that why an MSP partner would want to sell to his customer one, two, three, four or five brands, when he can position Acronis?
CEN: How important is Africa in the Acronis’ scheme of things?
NICK/SARA: Africa is very important and we have been making difference quarter-over- quarter in terms of world-wide results. For the past year and half, the incremental growth that we see, which is 150 per cent that we saw in terms of partnerships, we had put Africa more on the map than it was. We would say, yes, it is very important.
CEN: Power is critical in data centre operations and you and I know very well that Nigeria is still struggling to overcome its power cum energy challenges. How might Acronis manage this obvious challenge to be able to offer effective and efficient world class tier III DC solutions to Nigerians?
NICK/SARA: I don’t think that is a question we can answer directly. The data centre does have an impact and will help with saving/storing the data should any infrastructure go out of power; but they have no influence on the power or energy challenges directly.
There are still a lot of reluctant partners they want to move to cloud solutions because they don’t want their data stored outside. So the first thing to battle this idea of not wanting is to have the data storage in-country. We would say this is the first step. The second step is to grow the partners that we have already recruited. The third step continues the growing of the existing database of partners. So this cannot happen without proper marketing channels, without proper and appropriate media attention, and without the brand support and awareness that are critical.
CEN: Why is modular approach to DC operations so popular?
NICK/SARA: Strictly speaking, from a personal point of view, I would say cost. It is easier to get started, to be up and running.
CEN: Why has Acronis decided to piggy-back on existing infrastructure instead of going for its own infrastructure?
NICK/SARA: We want to get started and to be up and running quickly. Projects can take a long time so a big part of that is leveraging local partnerships.
CEN: Who are your global partners and how many of these are from Nigeria/Africa?
NICK/SARA: We can’t be mentioning global strategic partners here. Account names we may not be able to provide without the greenlight from the specific partners, whether they are existing or not.
CEN: How does Nigeria specifically fit into the Acronis Global Initiative?
NICK/SARA: As my colleague Sara mentions, Nigeria is the biggest economy in Africa and we have 20 per cent of penetration in the region and so we can see there are opportunities for our company to grow and to help our partners grow as well. That’s why Nigeria is important. On top of that, we also like to see our mission to protect data (cyber protection is the fifth basic human right). With Acronis we can offer that kind of data protection. Everyone should be able to access it. And an important part of that is to have the latitude to offer cyber protection locally as well, without having data, from a data privacy perspective, shipped off to some other countries.
CEN: What is the promise that Acronis is bringing to the Nigerian cum African market?
NICK/SARA: Well, we are bringing opportunities for our partners( both existing and new) to grow. Having a presence here, firstly with a data centre, and more active personnel on ground, we intend to help our existing and new partners to benefit and for the customers to be protected as well.
- Keene is Regional Solutions Engineer, Africa while Pinheiro is Distributor Account Manager Africa at Acronis.
