Zerto software makes gains in busy disaster recovery market

The year 2016 was a wild and crazy one for business disasters.

An increase in ransomware attacks and IT outages such as Delta’s constantly made headlines.

These high-profile issues drove the need for Zerto software and disaster recovery (DR) in general, said Jennifer Gill, director of global product marketing for the Boston vendor. Zerto said 2016 was its fifth consecutive year of near triple-digit sales growth.

Specifically, the business continuity (BC) and DR vendor reported gains in healthcare, financial services, government, education and retail sectors.

While many think of disasters as nature-related, that is often not the case. For example, the Delta outage in August was not caused by weather, Gill noted.

Ransomware in healthcare drove adoption of Zerto software in that industry, Gill said. And Zerto’s replication method is a benefit for financial services’ need to process many transactions.

Zerto’s Virtual Replication 4.5, released in early 2016, helps enterprises recover from ransomware attacks. Journal File Level Recovery enables restoration of any file or folder from a point in time within seconds before an accidental deletion, virus or data corruption.

Zerto Virtual Replication 5.0, released in November, extended the feature to a 30-day journal, which is important because ransomware can go undetected for a time, Gill said. Zerto 5.0 also includes “One-to-Many” simultaneous replication to multiple targets. The Zerto mobile BC/DR app provides remote monitoring of IT environments.

Zerto’s funding, hiring and conferencing

Zerto raised $70 million in funding in 2016: $50 million in January and the rest in June.

“It extends what we can do and how long we can continue to be as aggressive as we are,” Rob Strechay, Zerto’s vice president of product, said after the $20 million funding round.

The company increased its global employee count by 53% in 2016, finishing the year with close to 500 employees. Zerto is eyeing similar employee growth for 2017.

Nearly 4,000 customers use Zerto software.

“I want to make sure they remain as happy as they are,” said Gill, who runs Zerto’s customer reference program.

The vendor is also looking ahead to its second annual conference, ZertoCon, scheduled this year for May 22-24 in Boston, where product announcements are expected. Former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden will be the keynote speaker.