SolarWinds MSP has slashed the price of its Backup Documents solution, integrated it with its cloud-based RMM platform, and added support for larger files.
The Durham, N.C.-based IT management software vendor officially announced those moves at its European Empower MSP partner event, which is currently taking place in London. It previewed them, meanwhile, three weeks ago at the U.S. edition of Empower MSP, in Orlando.
Introduced in August, Backup Documents is a lightweight edition of the more full-featured SolarWinds Backup solution that’s designed to protect end users from hardware failures, accidental deletions, and ransomware by automatically protecting files and documents on workstations.
The system debuted at $3 per user per month, but is now available for just $1 per user monthly instead. That change comes in response to feedback from partners, according to Mike Cullen, the vendor’s vice president of business strategy and customer retention.
“We brought the product to market and to get the coverage that we want to get with it, we priced it too high,” he says. “We listened to our partners. We brought the price down.”
SolarWinds MSP positions Backup Documents as a safeguard of last resort its partners should deploy to all of their customers to keep recovery efforts after data loss incidents from eating into margins. The lower price the company introduced today is designed to eliminate cost and budgets as barriers to realizing that goal.
“These days you put anti-virus [software] everywhere,” observes Dave Sobel, senior director of community and field marketing at SolarWinds MSP. “Our thinking is that ransomware protection needs to be done the same way.”
Users can also now manage Backup Documents, which was originally a stand-alone product only, via SolarWinds MSP’s cloud-based RMM solution. That brings the new system in alignment with the rest of the company’s backup products, which can be used on their own or in tandem with an RMM system. Work is presently underway to integrate Backup Documents with the on-premises N-central RMM platform as well.
Like the pricing changes unveiled today, the changes to file size limits also come in response to input from partners. The initial version of Backup Documents automatically copied files up to 50 MB in size only, to prevent CAD drawings, videos, and other files requiring large amounts of storage capacity from making the product’s disruptive pricing model unsustainable. Users, however, have been clamoring for a higher threshold.
“We were a little too low, so we’ve upped the file size limits,” Sobel says.
Elsewhere at Empower MSP this morning during a product roadmap keynote, Vice President of Products Greg Lissy revealed that future editions of SolarWinds Backup will accommodate lower recovery point objectives by backing up documents multiple times a day, and allow administrators to adjust backup-related settings on multiple endpoints at one time simultaneously.
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