Cygnus Systems Saves $12,000 Over Datto Every Month with Axcient

With Axcient’s all-in-one BCDR solution, Cygnus Systems solves multiple use cases with one solution to reduce overall costs by 50% every month.

The numbers speak for themselves, which goes straight to gross profit. It’s a drastic move of the needle from a business perspective, and it’s pretty phenomenal what we’ve been able to achieve with Axcient in terms of lowering the cost of the solution itself and reducing the amount of time our engineers have to spend on tickets. ”

Scott Kube, VP of Sales and Marketing at Cygnus Systems

The Challenge

High Costs + Vendor Shakeups = New Solution Search

Cygnus Systems, an MSP serving businesses of all sizes throughout the Midwest region, had evolved their backup and disaster recovery (BDR) services similarly to many MSPs. First trying to piecemeal different vendors together, then moving to Datto as their one source vendor. Unfortunately, costs continued to rise with Datto due to expensive hardware and engineering time. Scott Kube, VP of Sales and Marketing at Cygnus Systems, explains, “Our support hours from the technical side, in terms of engineers having to be involved with ticket resolution and working with Datto was going up and up. Those soft dollar costs were killing us from a margin perspective.”

Regular backup errors and failures, coupled with declining support responses, were compounded by Datto’s acquisition by Kaseya, which gave Cygnus pause. Together, these issues sent Cygnus looking for a new BDR solution that would cut costs while providing comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) for multiple use cases.

The Solution

x360Recover Becomes the Standard BCDR Solution for All Cygnus Clients

When Cygnus Systems was vetting possible BCDR solutions and vendors, they targeted 50% savings versus their costs with Datto. Not only did the hardware need to be much more cost-effective, but they wanted a vendor that performed managed services as intended. Scott says, “It’s not a managed service if our team has to manage it and fix it. The more we have to get involved, the more costly it is to us, and the more we’re unable to do other things.” Additionally, Cygnus was looking for a product that would support their drive toward operational maturity through tech stack consolidation. They only wanted one partner for backup to reduce vendor management costs while empowering technicians to master a single solution.

After calculating expected cost savings, learning about Axcient’s MSP-only solutions and commitment to the channel, and demoing  x360Recover for BCDR, Cygnus Systems became a partner. With projected savings above their 50% target, Cygnus prioritized the move to Axcient in order to gain the business benefits of cost reduction as soon as possible. Cygnus migrated about 40 Datto units, and Scott describes the move as “pretty minimal from a bumpiness perspective,” adding, “I didn’t hear one customer complaint, which I think is a tremendous testament to both the Axcient team and our engineers.”

Cygnus added x360Recover to their stack as part of their standard security offering for all their clients, no matter what. With the capacity to deploy both appliance-based and hardware-free BDR with x360Recover Direct-to-Cloud (D2C), Cygnus can satisfy multiple use cases with just one solution and one vendor. Having standardized on x360Recover as their sole BCDR solution, Cygnus is streamlining operations from engineering to sales. Scott says, “We’ve successfully narrowed our technology stack. Every one of our engineers is certified on x360Recover, which is a differentiator within the selling environment and enables us to fix stuff faster for our clients. Our salespeople have a much deeper knowledge of the product, allowing us to sell more intelligently, overcome objections more easily, and close more business.”

The Results

Achieving Significant Cost Savings Over Datto with Innovation, Automation, and Simplicity

Our relationship with Axcient is reinforced daily with world-class sales and tech support, the very competitive pricing, and the ease of maintaining the product stack.” – Craig Issacs, Executive Vice President of Operations at Cygnus Systems

Since moving to Axcient, Cygnus Systems is saving $12,000 every month versus what they previously paid with Datto. Total costs are down 50% due to a 70% decrease in tickets and at least a 50% reduction in labor costs. While cost-efficient hardware had a lot to do with the initial savings, the critical capabilities included in x360Recover are delivering the rest.

Axcient’s AutoVerify feature intelligently and automatically performs daily backup integrity tests to ensure the health and bootability of backups. Without the backup errors and failures Cygnus was juggling previously, their engineers are free to focus on value add tasks instead. Similarly, Axcient’s innovative x360Recover Direct-to-Cloud deployment option removed the stress, limitations, on-site visits, and required maintenance for hardware-free BDR clients. Scott says, “We don’t see a lot of tickets coming from Axcient, and when we do, Axcient jumps on it and takes care of it without needing a lot of help from us. That’s the type of managed solution that we, and most MSPs, should be looking for. We want the engineers to spend as much of their time on billable utilization, and now they can.” Additional time and money savers include Axcient’s proprietary Chain-Free backup technology, pooled flat-fee storage, and simple per-device or per-server pricing.

Since migrating to Axcient, Cygnus Systems has also started using x360Cloud for Microsoft 365 backup. Scott says, “A side benefit that we hadn’t anticipated was how pleased we are with the x360Cloud solution. The way it’s constructed is terrific from our vantage point. The way that it’s executed, the price point, it’s very simple and easy to understand, and we’ve got a great deal of acceptance with that. So there are some add-on sales that we really didn’t anticipate initially.” Moving forward, Cygnus Systems will continue to rely on Axcient as their backup provider and partner in data protection.

The feedback we’ve gotten from our operations team is Axcient is easier to work with, more responsive, and less expensive, which is a pretty good combination from a managed service provider perspective.” – Scott Kube, VP of Sales and Marketing at Cygnus Systems

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