As solution providers and their customers struggle with increasing regulatory and financial pressures, demand is increasing for backup and disaster recovery solutions delivered via a software-as-a-service (SAAS) model.

To help solution provider partners capitalize on this demand, Bell Micro has teamed with Teneros to deliver Teneros’ new high-availability and disaster recovery SAAS solution for Microsoft Exchange.

The new solution offers Teneros' Instant-On failover technology and provides round-the-clock e-mail uptime for businesses running Microsoft Exchange, says Manish Kalia, vice president of marketing and founder of Teneros.

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While Bell Micro already had a strong partnership with Teneros, selling the vendor’s high-availability appliances, the new partnership takes advantage of solution providers’ need for the flexibility and cost efficiency a SAAS model can provide while helping customers secure their mission-critical e-mail and messaging platforms, Kalia says.

“Messaging infrastructure and e-mail have become much more than just an application for customers,” he says. “It’s a platform, a cornerstone of communication and collaboration,” Kalia says. He adds that many corporate systems like unified messaging, BlackBerry networks and the like are built on customers’ e-mail platforms, increasing demand for a solution that can provide affordable disaster recovery and backup in this space.

Kalia says that with the economy floundering, most organizations are having to deal with reductions in their capital expense budgets, which makes backup and disaster recovery more difficult to accomplish. Many customers affected by slashed IT budgets are looking for SAAS offerings that include a hybrid on-site appliance but are delivered and managed remotely, he says.

“We’re making a much bigger play now as we see increased demand—and we’re seeing demand all the way from an SMB to large customers with over 20,000 employees,” he says. In addition to increased budget constraints, many large organizations are under regulatory pressure as well, and it’s imperative that they have a secure, high-availability solution that allows them to safely archive intellectual property as required, he says.

The hybrid solution allows solution providers to deploy Teneros’ appliances on site, and customers store their data on the appliance within their own network, Kalia says. The appliances are remotely monitored and managed by Teneros solution providers from remote locations, he says, eliminating the need for additional IT skills or in-house maintenance.

For Bell Micro solution provider partners, the ability to offer a hybrid on-site and SAAS model solution means partners can offer increased flexibility to customers and can provide multiple routes to market, says Gary Gammon, senior vice president of enterprise marketing for Bell Micro.

“From a customer perspective, it makes perfect sense to have an appliance-based solution as well as this service, and it makes their decision to buy much easier,” Gammon says. “Resellers love having more than one way to sell, and this can give them extra protection in a market where closing deals is tough.” The service requires no up-front investment, and is billed on a per-mailbox monthly fee, he says.

Gammon says Bell Micro is currently looking at other, similar SAAS partnerships with vendors that could be complementary for Bell Micro’s existing hardware offerings.

“We definitely see potential to expand this, with SAAS offerings that build on our core competencies and help our resellers be more flexible and profitable,” Gammon says.