Stage2Data – why, where and when it all started
Stage2Data started as a managed service provider, initially offering secure cloud backup solutions. This is also the origin of the company’s name – ‘Stage2Data’ refers to the second stage of your data. As the company grew, it became Canada’s first disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) provider and went from strength to strength thereafter.
Today Stage2Data is an award-winning Cloud Service Provider (CSP) and a certified carrier-grade internet solutions provider (ISP) specializing in backup, disaster recovery, cloud infrastructure solutions, and networking crucial to these services. By partnering with best-of-breed technology providers, the company offers comprehensive data protection, including robust protection from cyber threats, that keeps our customers operational when they need it most. Petrus Human, Stage2Data’s CEO & President, explains:
“Understanding customer needs and ensuring customer satisfaction is our most important core value. It is closely linked to our aim to always provide quality technology solutions for a quality price and scale with our customers’ business needs.”
On the horizon: Cyber Security Service
With ransomware and cyberattacks increasing year on year, Stage2Data introduced a new service to the market. It includes subject matter experts and a resilience strategy. The focus of this new service and strategy is to ensure that data can be recovered if an organization falls victim to ransomware and to ensure that it is not compromised again.
What makes Stage2Data unique?
The company decided to differentiate disaster recovery (DR) and become a leader in the market. It did so by offering network services, upgrading its backend infrastructure and becoming a carrier-grade internet service provider adding multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) layer 2 connectivity. It uses MPLS, SDWAN and other groundbreaking network technologies to create comprehensive networking for DR and recovery from cyber security events. For customers, this new solutions portfolio means their IP addresses will remain constant should a complete network failure occur.
As part of its network services, Stage2Data also coined the term NRaaSᵀᴹ or Network Recovery as a Service.ᵀᴹ NRaaSᵀᴹ allows for seamless failover of networks from one location to another using the Stage2Data networking services. This type of failover allows for zero modification failover, where all internal and external IP addresses and networks remain intact for full or even partial failovers. There is no need for DNS or any other network updates during this process.
The latest unique Stage2Data offering is called Cloud Provider Resiliency (CPR).ᵀᴹ This service ensures the secure storage of data on multiple levels to the effect that there is ensured recoverability from events and, more specifically, cybersecurity and ransomware breaches by having data available across multiple cloud providers.
“We take a pragmatic risk-based approach to helping organizations of all sizes monitor cyberspace and make better decisions regarding core data and cybersecurity protection. Ultimately, our goal is to offer a unique approach to DR, not offered by any other DR provider”, says Petrus.
A look at the future
Stage2Data invested in a multi-tenant cloud environment based on VMWARE’s Vcloud Director, where a single software instance can serve multiple distinct user groups. Stage2Data’s long-term goal is to identify customers and partners who want to use their flagship solutions, NRaaSᵀᴹ and CPR,ᵀᴹ and organizations looking to scale while having peace of mind that their data is truly resilient against cyber threats or disruptive events. Stage2Data’s services are built on three pillars – Cyber Security, Disaster Recovery, and networking solutions. The company’s core service is cyber resiliency and incident response utilizing its unique disaster recovery and networking topologies.
Partnerships with world-class vendors are at the core of our business
Over the years, Stage2Data has fostered partnerships with best-of-breed technology service providers such as Cohesity, Zerto, VEEAM, VMWARE, HyperV, Microsoft and MinIO. These partnerships allow the company to identify new trends and emerging technologies and stay at the forefront of cyber resiliency and incident response.
Stage2Data’s strategic partnership with Cohesity has strengthened the company’s superior cloud data management offerings in North America. Since partnering with Cohesity, Stage2Data has increased revenue and accelerated customer acquisition while improving recovery service-level agreements (SLAs), boosting staff productivity, and driving scale.
Partnering with Zerto gave both companies a strong foothold in the high-growth area of enterprise-class business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) solutions for virtualized infrastructure and cloud.
MinIO, a pioneer in high-performance, S3-compatible object storage, specializes in developing cloud-native object storage and helps businesses build private cloud infrastructure. The partnership promises to accelerate Stage2Data’s SaaS portfolio and enhance its long-term object storage capabilities.
Why customers enjoy working with S2D
Stage2Data offers technical expertise and support that rapidly get services up and running. The company’s experts offer diverse experience and a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to cybersecurity. Mature escalation policies, service-level agreement-based timelines, expert support engineers, and a dedicated support team makes Stage2Data the best choice. The company boasts a track record of never not being able to recover data.
A 6 to 12 Month roadmap
With decades of collective experience in cloud backup, cloud storage and data management, our core values have served us well over the years – we have learned that we cannot be everything to everyone and risk becoming a Jack of all trades.
“Our goal is to offer a service where MSPs looking for a comprehensive DR solution can get access to all services without the hardware expense. This will enable more MSPs to offer Stage2Data’s quality solutions to their clients”, says Petrus.
Stage2Data has one goal in mind: To protect, control and recover any organization’s data and applications.
