Alcion Emerges from Stealth with AI-Driven Backup-as-a-Service Platform for Microsoft 365

By Business Wire On Jun 1, 2023

Startup led by former Kasten founders with deep data protection experience secures $8 million in seed funding to launch intelligent, security-first SaaS that proactively protects customers from threat-driven and accidental data loss.

Alcion, a modern data management startup, announced $8M in seed funding from prominent angel investors, and the public preview of its AI-driven Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform. Developed with a product-led and community-driven focus, Alcion provides Microsoft 365 admins with an easy-to-use, intelligent, and secure SaaS platform to protect against ransomware, malware, corruption, and accidental data loss.

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“Data protection is more critical than ever and, given my experience in building secure scalable platforms that are also easy to adopt, the companies that are successful in this space will be those that can effectively balance security with accessibility”

Alcion was founded by Niraj Tolia and Vaibhav Kamra, two serial entrepreneurs with deep domain expertise in data protection. They previously founded Kasten, the leading and award-winning Kubernetes backup company that was acquired by Veeam in 2020.

“We are thrilled to announce our market entry with a fully-managed AI-driven backup service for Microsoft 365 users,” said Niraj Tolia, CEO and co-founder. “This significant round of funding allows us to exit stealth mode, take our modern BaaS product to market, expand our community, and accelerate product development.”

Alcion provides comprehensive data protection using a modern and security-focused architecture that includes predictive Recovery Point Objective (RPO) reduction, integrated threat detection, and response algorithms. The high-value and increasing amounts of business-critical data stored in Microsoft 365 makes it a prime target for both internal and external malicious actors, including new classes of ransomware. While Microsoft ensures the reliability and availability of Microsoft 365 infrastructure, it does not protect against cases in which cyberattacks or accidents lead to data loss. Traditional Microsoft 365 backup solutions are often totally unaware of ongoing security threats, are limited to reactive action, and haven’t been designed with today’s threat environments in mind. Alcion directly addresses these challenges through its threat detection, automated responses, intelligent backup scheduling and default delete protection offerings.

“When it came to finding a backup solution for our Microsoft 365 data, ease of use was a top requirement,” said Bryan Whiting, CTO, Milestone Financial Engineering. “In fact, the complexity of setup and time investment required by other Microsoft 365 backup products had been a barrier to adoption at Milestone Financial Engineers. Alcion’s simplicity made setup a breeze and, without ever reading the documentation or undergoing training, we went from setup to backing up all our data in under 10 minutes!”

“Preventing downtime due to malicious intent has been top-of-mind for us,” said Ryan Elliot, VP of Client Solutions at KēSTA I.T. “Alcion has allowed us to protect our critical business data from both potential internal threats and external cyber threats such as malware and ransomware.”

Leveraging community-driven product development and based on Corso, Alcion’s popular open-source project for Microsoft 365 backup, Alcion’s BaaS platform provides easy-to-use comprehensive backup and restore workflows, enabling reliable and fault-tolerant backups. Additionally, the Alcion BaaS solution supports XDR integration (e.g., 365 Defender) for proactive backups, includes ransomware detection, supports intelligent backup scheduling to reduce RPO, and more.

Alcion’s seed round was driven by several prominent angels including Lip-Bu Tan, Chairman of Walden International and Intel Board Member, Abhinav Asthana, CEO and founder of Postman, Debanjan Saha, CEO of DataRobot, and Amarjit Gill, serial entrepreneur and investor at Nepenthe Capital.

“Niraj and Vaibhav have a finger on the pulse of the solutions that modern businesses need to be more efficient and productive,” said Tan. “Alcion’s AI-driven BaaS platform serves a growing market need for intelligent data management, recovery, and threat detection that will surely come to be an industry standard.”

“Data protection is more critical than ever and, given my experience in building secure scalable platforms that are also easy to adopt, the companies that are successful in this space will be those that can effectively balance security with accessibility,” said Asthana. “I’m excited to invest in Alcion because of their innovative work at the intersection of data and security. With a highly-talented team focused on ease-of-use and security, I am confident they will make a significant impact on the field of data protection.”

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