StorageCraft has jumped aboard the move to the cloud, unveiling StorageCraft Cloud Services for Australia and New Zealand – complete with claims of 60 second cloud disaster recovery.

Greg Wyman, StorageCraft vice president Asia Pacific, says the new offering, which allows a server to be restored to the cloud 'in typically less than 60 seconds', is initially only available to managed service providers participating in the company's MSP programme.

Wyman says he expects the new offering to drive adoption of the company's MSP programme. While some of StorageCraft's New Zealand resellers already have the infrastructure in place to begin offering the service, he says those who don't can use StorageCraft's back end data center.

“StorageCraft Cloud Services allows us to extend backup, file and folder recovery, onsite failover and virtualisation capabilities into the cloud," Wyman says.

"It is a perfect fit with ShadowProtect 5, which supports the latest Microsoft Windows operating systems and enables our channel partners to continue delivering fast, flexible and reliable disaster recovery to their customers."

“We have two goals: to supply our partners with the tools to quickly execute effective disaster recovery for their customers and to give partners the opportunity to increase their profitability.

The cloud solution will officially launch on March 12, accompanied by the release of StorageCraft's ShadowProtect 5 and ImageManager 6.

Roadshows and reseller sales and technical training for the new offerings will follow the Sydney launch, with the show touching down in Auckland on April 16.

Wyman says today's pre-launch announcement is to enable resellers to prepare for the new offering, which requires the new versions of ShadowProtect and ImageManager.

Cloud Services will be available in three tiered options: Cloud Basic, which archives critical business backup images; Cloud+, which includes Cloud Basic plus immediate file and folder recovery; and Cloud Premium which adds instant virtualisation of data and failover in the cloud to the Cloud+ offering.

Resellers and users will pay monthly for the storage they use. The cloud offering is expected to be fully live in New Zealand by the end of July.

Wyman says today's announcement marks a shift in focus at StorageCraft from single products to a complete end-to-end business continuity solution to help MSPs and value-added resellers build their business.