Back in 2009 I received an email from an AWS developer named Andy. He told me that he and his team of five engineers had built a product called CloudBerryExplorer for Amazon S3. I mentioned his product in my CloudFront Management Tool Roundup and in several subsequent blog posts. During re:Invent 2019, I learned that CloudBerry has grown to over 130 employees and is now known as MSP360. Andy and his core team are still in place, and continue to provide file management and cloud-based backup services.
MSP360 focuses on providing backup and remote management services to Managed Service Providers (MSPs). These providers, in turn, market to IT professionals and small businesses. MSP360, in effect, provides an “MSP in a box” that gives the MSPs the ability to provide a robust, AWS-powered cloud backup solution. Each MSP can add their own branding and market the resulting product to the target audience of their choice: construction, financial services, legal services, healthcare, and manufacturing to name a few.
We launched the AWS Partner Network (APN) in 2012. MSP360 was one of the first to join. Today, as an APN Advanced Technology Partner with Storage Competency for the Backup & Restore use case and one of our top storage partners, MSP360 gives its customers access to multiple Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) storage options and classes, and also supports Snowball Edge. They are planning to support AWS Outposts and are also working on a billing model that will simplify the billing experience for MSP360 customers that use Amazon S3.
Here I am with the MSP360 team and some of my AWS colleagues at re:Invent 2019:
Inside MSP360 (CloudBerry) Managed Backup Service
CloudBerry Explorer started out as a file transfer scheduler that ran only on Windows. It is now known as MSP360 (CloudBerry) Managed Backup Service (MBS) and provides centralized job management, monitoring, reporting, and licensing control. MBS supports file-based and image-level backup, and also includes specialized support for applications like SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange. Agentless, host-level backup support is available for VMware and Hyper-V. Customers can also backup Microsoft Office 365 and Google G Suite documents, data, and configurations.
By the Numbers
The product suite is available via a monthly subscription model that is a great fit for the MSPs and for their customers. As reported in a recent story, this model has allowed them to grow their revenue by 60% in 2019, driven by a 40% increase in product activations. Their customer base now includes over 9,000 MSPs and over 100,000 end-user customers. Working together with their MSP, customers can choose to store their data in any commercial AWS region, including the two regions in China.