Acronis names John Zanni Senior Vice President of Cloud and Hosting Sales

Zanni comes to Acronis from Parallels, the platform provider for cloud service delivery, where he served as Chief Marketing Officer for the global service provider business. Prior to joining Parallels, he was General Manager of the Worldwide Software + Services Industry team at Microsoft where he was responsible for driving the strategy for the company’s hosting and cloud division, which he grew into a $1B+ business.

“Throughout the years John has proven his ability to drive meaningful growth and adoption of cloud and hosting services,” said Serguei Beloussov, CEO and co-founder of Acronis. “As more businesses of all sizes realise the need for reliable, secure and dual-protection cloud backup, John’s expertise and knowledge of the channel and market will allow Acronis to deliver our impressive and expanding cloud portfolio to these businesses across the world. He’s going to lead the Cloud business unit to build its current success.”

Zanni’s hiring comes on the heels of significant momentum within Acronis’ cloud business. Last month the company acquired two cloud companies, BackupAgent and nScaled, strengthening its cloud backup offerings and expanding its portfolio. Acronis also recently opened new data centres in Asia and Europe, delivering localised cloud storage to customers in those regions. In February, Acronis launched its first SaaS-based cloud backup and recovery tool, Acronis Backup as a Service. Bolstered by Parallels recent SMB Cloud Insights™ research which shows data backup and recovery is one of the top three most demanded services, Acronis is making significant company, product and personnel moves to meet customer demand.

“More businesses demand reliable and easy-to-use cloud data protection tools. Acronis is making the right investments and quickly becoming a dominant player in the cloud backup and recovery business,” said Zanni. “Now is the time to scale by continuing to build strategic relationships, expand and accelerate channel sales and continue our rapid pace of innovation..”

Zanni will join Acronis’ expanding cloud team and will help drive growth of Acronis cloud products, including Acronis Backup as a Service and its SPLA licensing model. He will facilitate the integration of BackupAgent and nScaled into the Acronis family. He will also be tasked with pushing forward the strategic direction of the cloud business, and strengthening and leveraging Acronis partnerships with Parallels and Microsoft.