Backup provider AmeriVault Corp. and managed services provider Network Technology Group Inc. (NTG), both owned by Provider HealthNet Services Inc., Monday announced plans to join forces as Venyu Inc., which will offer data backup, disaster recovery and managed data center services to small- to mid-sized businesses.

AmeriVault and NTG were both purchased over the last two years by Provider HealthNet Services (PHNS), a US$167 million provider of managed IT services to hospitals. Venyu, based in Baton Rouge, becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary of PHNS.

Venyu's service uses EVault and Asigra online backup and disaster recovery software from Seagate Technology LLC's i365 subsidiary and Backup Technology Ltd., respectively.

Executives said that the new company offers backup for both physical and virtualized server infrastructures, as well as managed hosting services for up to 60TB of data for each subscriber. All data is kept on disk subsystems from EMC Corp. or NetApp Inc.

"We're focused on virtual disaster recovery," said Scott Thompson, CEO of Venyu. "If you have five servers, we will take a snapshot of the data residing on them and keep a virtual instance of them in our own facility."

Pricing starts at around $250 for 50GB of storage and the backup of one server, Thompson said.

The company offers a online price quote engine.

"A growing number of organizations face backup and recovery redesign but lack the facilities and resources to execute on it," said Jerome Wendt, an analyst at DCIG Inc. "The launch of Venyu provides organizations with a solution for their immediate backup needs while enabling them to address their more strategic disaster recovery and availability objectives."