Imation introduced new purpose-built backup appliances designed to enable SMBs to safeguard their information with multiple levels of data protection from a single backup infrastructure.

Imation's solution set, including a practical approach to a cloud tier for backup, meets a demand among SMBs for an appliance that ensures data protection, regulatory compliance and disaster recovery.

DataGuard R4 and DataGuard T5R appliances are compatible with many cloud storage APIs, including those from Amazon S3, Dropbox and OpenStack-based cloud providers.

Once a cloud backup is seeded by shuttling RDX cartridges, DataGuard supports easy remote backups, and SMBs can automate protection since data backup to cloud storage is performed without any human intervention once it is initially configured.

“Cloud is very compelling, but the initial data transfer to a cloud service encounters very real limitations – large amounts of data and limited bandwidth,” said Ian Williams, vice president, Global Marketing and Product Management, Imation. “This initial transfer – known as cloud seeding – can take weeks over an Internet connection depending on the data footprint. Imation’s DataGuard appliances eliminate this issue, as customers can physically transport an RDX cartridge to a cloud provider for initial seeding, and integrated software manages periodic checks to ensure the cloud backup is current.”