Stephen Lawton, Acronis Inc.1

Senior Director, Strategic Marketing
Burlington - MA United States

The big idea: In 25 words or less, please tell us how this Fast 50 Nominee is helping to address the planet's problems.

Acronis provides advanced, scalable storage management and disaster recovery software to consumers, small and mid-size businesses and the Fortune 500 throughout the world.

Please describe how this nominee is using business as a force of positive change. What technology, idea, or strategy is the nominee using -- and what problem, such as global warming, poverty, or pollution, does it address? (suggested length: 100 words)

Small businesses are booming around the world. Like large corporations, small businesses need to protect their digital assets. In fact, small businesses are at greater risk of failing if just one or two servers go down for an extended period of time. Protecting digital assets for SMBs quickly and efficiently are hallmarks of Acronis' success in the industry.

Acronis creates backup and recovery software that allows users of all technical levels the ability to create an exact image of their entire computer, including the operating system, applications, configuration files, security updates, data and anything else that might reside on a workstation or a server.

Recovery is equally effortless -- even nontechnical staff can restore a failed server in minutes. For the SMB, this means they don't have the added expense of full-time IT people or expensive consultants. For the home user, their music, family photos, videos and documents are safe and secure.

What are the results, both financial and social? How has the nominee's business performed, and what impact has it had on the problem it addresses? (suggested length: 100 words)

For the past 5 years, the company is growing at a 150% compounded rate annually. Socially, our success is the success of users world wide, including SMBs, government agencies, consumers and large corporate customers.

Local government agencies are always forced to provide far more services than their budgets allow. In 2004, Hardee County, Florida, selected Acronis True Image as its backup solution for the County Emergency Management Department. Then, in August 2004, Hurricane Charlie struck. "I remember the director of Emergency Management asking what are we going to do now because the phones, cell phones, satellite, and radio communication systems were completely wiped away by the storm," said Don Faulkner, then a Hardee County IT Specialist. "Before we lost power, Acronis True Image Server completed it’s regularly scheduled 11 p.m. daily image task. We used this image to restore the entire web server in just eight minutes."

For almost one full week after the storm, email was the only form of communication the county had with the outside world. "Acronis True Image Server was a godsend. Without this application we would have had no communication with the outside world for almost a week, significantly delaying the assistance we desperately needed to provide to Hardee County residents after the storm," Faulkner noted.

Weeks later, Hurricane Frances hit the battered Hardee County. Only four of the department’s 25 original workstations were usable by then. The Hardee County School District loaned the department 10 laptops. The laptops were bare and needed the operating system and all applications installed before Hurricane Frances hit. Faulkner used Acronis True Image Workstation to build one standard system, imaged it, and used that image to deploy the other nine workstations. "Preparing the first laptop took approximately three hours. However, with Acronis True Image Workstation, I was able to deploy all of the remaining nine laptops in just 22 minutes. Acronis True Image saved us once again," Faulkner said.

"Thanks to Acronis and the Hardee County School System, we were fully prepared for Hurricane Jeanne when it hit us a few weeks after Frances," Faulkner said.

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