Acronis Invest $10 Million in R&D Labs

Acronis International GmbH will make an investment of $10 million into Acronis Labs, a new R&D initiative which will address the challenges associated with cloud services, big data, archiving and mobility tools.

Acronis Labs will put a portion of its investments in human resources to hire the top computer scientists, developers and programmers. The Labs will address the growing needs to store vast amounts of data, drive down associated costs and utilise cloud technologies.

The teams based in Arlington, VA, and Moscow, Russia will build upon technologies found in Acronis True Image, Backup & Recovery and Storage, while also focusing on:

• Creating next-gen storage management technologies
• Developing performance product evaluation to ensure that all products are top of the line and efficient, fast, secure and reliable
• Strengthening patent portfolio
• Perfecting complex technologies for use in broad market products.

“The data protection and backup sectors are more important now than ever before, since we’re deluged with growing amounts of data that’s central to our personal lives and businesses. We are launching Acronis Labs to accelerate the creation of new technologies that solve this massive problem, which potentially affects everyone who uses a computer, tablet or mobile phone,” said Serguei Beloussov, Acronis CEO. “Acronis Labs is the place to be if you want to create new ways of dealing with storage and see them pushing the limits of what is possible for millions of users of Acronis products.”

The core of the labs is a full-time team of computer scientists, developers and programmers with experience at the company, some working at Acronis since it was founded.

Acronis VP of engineering, Max Lyadvinsky will bring his 12 years of expertise in managing complex software projects and interest in cloud and big data technologies to head Acronis Labs. He holds 31 patents for backup and storage technologies and was instrumental in creating Backup and Recovery, which is made up of 4.7 million lines of code. One of Acronis’ most prominent engineers with over 15 years of expertise in storage and the company’s core technologies, Alexey Trunov, will be the lab’s chief architect.

Acronis Labs will consist of four organisational units, collaborating with each other:

• Core Lab: This team will focus on creating strategic technologies that will become the foundation of future products, building on success of existing Acronis technologies and addressing the challenges of big data, mobility and cloud.
• Performance Lab: This team will develop technologies and best practices for measuring and optimising performance parameters of next gen storage components on a large scale. A significant portion of the initial investment will be dedicated to outfitting the lab with top-notch hardware.
• Intellectual Property (IP) Lab: IP Lab would not be limited to assigning patents to parental company, but also incentivise all of employees to create and patent promising ideas with the help and support of IP Lab experts. The IP Lab aims to build on existing 100+ Acronis patent portfolio to strengthen its position as one of the most innovative Russian high-tech companies.
• Product Lab: The team within Product Lab will focus on productising of existing and newly developed narrowly focused technologies that will later become landmark features of Acronis products. Products Lab will perfect these technologies (including usability, performance and positioning) before adopting them into mainline products.