US disaster recovery (DR) specialist Quorum has launched a cloud-based service for SMBs in the UK. Its OnQ hybrid cloud service is pitched as a first for the DR business, because the service restores the entire IT workflow rather than just recovering data.

It is aimed at small-to mid-sized businesses that may want robust disaster recovery – such as companies in financial services, healthcare and retail – which do not want the complexity and high cost associated with traditional data center replication.

But this is not why the technology was first created. Quorum’s founder, computer scientist Marc Goroff, holds the patent for the technology which he developed when he was part of an R&D team at Themis Computer, a company which builds and markets resilient computing products for mission-critical applications in the aerospace, telecommunications, military and industrial control markets.

Quorum’s technology was originally developed for warships, and was used by the US Navy, so it is  robust and quick and easy to operate or, as VP of sales Tony Craythorne puts it, “...able to be worked by sailors when their ship got hit”.

Goroff says he soon realized the technology had much wider commercial applications. This led to Quorum being formed in 2008. The company was spun out as a separate enterprise with the backing of venture capitalists and a group of investors that were behind a number of successful tech companies including Digital Island.

How it works
Quorum’s foundation technology is a patented system for distributed computing resource management, and it offers one-click recovery within minutes of a failure, according to the company. The technologyis a two-appliance system – customers can use one appliance on site and replicate to a second appliance, which is either at a DR site or hosted by a valued-added reseller (VAR) or cloud provider. This setup makes full and incremental backups, at intervals which can be set by the customer, with the shortest interval being 15 minutes. It creates virtual clones of the systems it protects.

The system automatically de-dupes so that it only sends parts of those files that do not already exist on any protected servers. It means that the customer has up-to-date virtual machine clones of systems that can run right on the appliance, and which can take over for failed servers within minutes.

There is no need to ship new hardware, or even construct a machine from an image after a disaster, as with most traditional disaster recovery applications, the company says.

Quorum is keen to emphasize the technology’s simple one-click approach,and Craythorne even cites one customer who was on a safari holiday when a server went down: he was able to fail over to Quorum’s appliance just by using his cell phone.

Quorum says that the system is secure with all data transferred from the appliance to the disaster recovery cloud going through a 128bit  advanced encryption standard (AES) session over a 256bit AES virtual private network tunnel that directly connects the Cloud to the local appliance.

There is a dedicated firewall to isolate each virtual network. Moreover, with more than a nod to the retail businesses it hopes to attract, Quorum is Payment Card Industry (PCI) certified, meaning that in the event of a failure all confidential financial information, such as credit card details, is handled in a fully PCI-compliant way.

A further differentiator, according to Craythorne, is that the platform is being sold on a per-server rather than per-gigabyte, basis.

“The traditional gigabyte sales model risks becoming very expensive as data scales, and incorrectly puts the focus on data. In contrast, Quorum puts the focus on business operations, which is the value we deliver,” he says.

“Our goal is to acquire customers by offering them a more comprehensive solution at a far better total cost.”

Expanding into Europe
The company is serious about establishing a presence in Europe through the use of third- party channels. It has recruited David Fisk, one-time sales director at Quest Software as VP of sales for EMEA and Craythorne, a Brit now based at the company’s headquarters in California and who was responsible for building up Brocade’s third-party channel globally. It also appointed former NetApp VP of emerging products Edward Sharp as CEO.

Craythorne says Quorum has had customers in the UK for the past two years, but the difference now is that the company has a local presence. It has taken space in a data center just outside London and has started a drive to recruit resellers. Banbury-based VAR and DR specialist Covenco Recovery Services is already working with the company and Craythorne says he expects to appoint a “very well known” UK distributor soon.

Craythorne says Quorum has doubled its revenues every year for the past three years and he is confident it will turn over £1m in the UK within a couple of years.

The company also has its sights set on operations elsewhere in Europe.

“We spent six months evaluating colocation providers and making sure we’re able to provide a rock-solid service,” Craythorne says. “We’re looking to do the same thing in mainland Europe later this year, but we need to approach it on a country by  country basis.”

This article first appeared in FOCUS Issue 36, available online here.