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articles, news and directory of internet storage providers on this page -
since 2000 |
| online backup news |
New Image for Cloud Storage
Editor:-
January 13, 2010 - a new article on
PCWorld.com
discusses on-low cost and no-cost cloud storage offerings from Google.
The
author David Coursey (and his commenting readers) make some interesting
comparisons with Microsoft 's SkyDrive.
Personally
I loathe the term "Cloud Storage". But I have to admit we're stuck
with it. So today I changed the graphic on the
online backup and storage
page.
The old one - with the tag about "Spellerbyte was
cooking up a new business plan which involved online web backup" - was
appropriate when it was first published 10 years ago - but no longer fits this
market's image today. I resisted the temptation to use an image compatible with
the business metaphor of "sad losers" or "big black hole for
VC investors."
Another Last Call for Tape Backup - from Storage Guardian
Editor:-
October 28, 2009 -
Storage Guardian
has launched a 'Dust-Off
Your Tapes' campaign to promote its
tape to online
backup migration service.
"We've seen tapes stacked in
basements and hidden in dusty storage closets, and it makes you wonder what will
happen when someone needs to restore that information," says Dave Minns,
client services manager at Storage Guardian. "What we're telling
small-business owners, and the resellers and managed service companies that work
with them, is that the time is right to migrate that information from those
dodgy tapes to the safety of
online backup."
History of
Migration from Tape to Disk Backup
Caringo Offers Free 4TB Cloud Storage Evaluation
Editor:-
June 23, 2009 - Caringo
today
announced
it's offering a free way to evaluate the benefits of its cloud storage -
with the release of a Windows compatible CloudFolder linked to 4TB storage.
The
company says users can drag and drop individual files or whole directories to
CloudFolder for remote storage and can also make it a shared folder. Retrieving
files is as easy as double clicking on a file or folder.
Mark Goros,
CEO at Caringo says "We believe CloudFolder will inspire users to test and
deploy private cloud storage within an organization or throughout a network of
managed service customers."
Systemic Risk with "Cloud Think"
Editor:-
June 4, 2009 - Burton
Group today published an article called -
Clouds
and Systemic Risk.
The author Jack Santos
says he thinks "clouds" are at a peak hype stage and ready for a big
disillusionment phase.
Vembu Aims at US Online Backup Market
Editor:- May
28, 2009 - Vembu
Technologies today announced the appointment of Randy J. Whitehead
as VP of Strategic Business Development.
Reporting to Vembu's
President,
Lakshmanan Narayan, Randy will
primarily be responsible for growing Vembu's business in the US and Canada,
with a focus on channel partnerships.
"Our StoreGrid software
solution powers the
online backup services
business of more than 1,250 service providers worldwide, and more than 850 of
these service providers are based in North America," said Sekar Vembu, CEO
of Vembu Technologies. "Randy's deep experience in operations and sales,
coupled with his years of experience in the online backup market, will help to
further catalyze our rapid growth in the service provider market."
Prior to Vembu, Randy was co-founder and COO of
Arsenal Digital Solutions.
Randy has more than 20 years experience in outsourcing solutions and operations,
system integration and business development. He was also at
StorageTek, where he
was responsible for the industry's first implementation of a storage utility
solution and the structuring of large outsourcing/utility deals, as well as the
operation and delivery of managed storage services. He has also held senior
positions with IBM, BT, Data General and AT&T. Storage People
CoreVault Advises Disaster Recovery Planning for Tornado States
Editor:- May 27, 2009 - as the Tornado season approaches
CoreVault is
advising DR planning with a 5 point check list.
1) - Develop a written
disaster recovery plan that identifies systems and assets critical to business
continuity;
2) - Establish a disaster recovery team with assignments and training
that leverages employee strengths in order to address the difficult and
stressful task of rebuilding operations after a disaster;
3) - Identify a physical recovery location to restore business
operations should the organization's physical location become unusable;
4) - Update and test disaster recovery plan processes on a regular
basis like performing recovery drills to assure reinstatement of both physical
and digital assets. In addition, testing the functionality of IT systems is also
critical.
5) - Protect business database, email and all important
Electronically Stored Information off-site at a trusted
managed backup and recovery
provider's information vault.
CoreVault warns that the US experiences more tornadoes each year than
any other country in the world. In 2008 alone, there were 1,691 confirmed
tornadoes reported. They cost roughly $2 billion in damages and 125 lives lost
each year. According to a classic book on
Disaster
Recovery Planning companies that experience a computer outage for more than
10 days will never fully recover financially.
New Venyu Announced for Online Backup
Editor:- April
6, 2009 -
Venyu
is the new name for
AmeriVault.
It follows AmeriVault's recent merger with NTG.
Storage Guardian Offers VARs White-Labeled Online Backup
Toronto,
Canada - March 17, 2009 -
Storage Guardian
has just launched a
VAR/MSP
program so that resellers can offer its enterprise-grade online data backup
service to small and midsized businesses.
While there's no shortage of
online backup solutions
available, many of them are designed for modest amounts of data and do not offer
bare-metal
restores, backup lifecycle management, and handle >80GB data.
Storage
Guardian's solution is
compatible
with server-based services/apps such as Exchange, Small Business Server,
SharePoint Server, and Active Directory. A 30-day no-charge trial is available,
and itcan also be white-labeled and sold as a branded solution by resellers.
See also:- Selected
Storage VARs
Just Another Online Backup Service
Montreal, Canada -
November 5 , 2008 - Copernic Inc. today announced the availability of
its new online backup service for individual PC users.
This
announcement is the result of a partnership with
SOS Online Backup.
Pricing starts at $29.95 / year for 5GB backup size and ranges upto $149.95.
...Copernic profile
Editor's
comments:- an article by Atempo
Building an Online
Backup Business: A Service Provider's Survival Guide pdf) says there are now
about 1,400 online backup service companies now in the market.
We've
published a directory of these companies here since
2000
and it's difficult finding something new or interesting to say about this
market.
A problem for online backup companies targeting SMBs and
consumers is that most people in those segments don't do regular backups - even
though they are most vulnerable. (In corporates - there is usually someone else
worrying about the backup problem - which provides a safety net.)
Another
problem is that SMB online backup isn't an attractive market from the business
point of view - because the marketing costs of acquiring new customers are very
similar to the annual revenue from a customer. So vendors don't make money
unless the customer uses the service for years - or unless there is some other
cross selling opportunity available. That's why some vendors offer their vanilla
backup services free - as a honeytrap - but charge for the chocolate strawberry
flavored serious editions. Analyzing that last sentence probably means I need to
break for a little snack.
Box.net Powers Online Storage for Dell Inspiron Mini
PALO ALTO, Calif.
- September 4, 2008 - Box.net today announced it has teamed with Dell
to offer remote storage on the highly anticipated Inspiron Mini 9.
A
purpose-built device designed for ultimate on-the-go-mobility,
Dell's
Inspiron Mini features a direct link to Box.net, providing users with an
easy way to add incremental storage and access to Box.net's suite of sharing and
collaboration tools. Box.net offers 3 custom plans for Inspiron Mini users
to choose from to meet their storage and collaboration needs. They are: Basic
2GB (free), Dell Plus 10GB for $59.99/year and Dell Pro 25GB for $99.99/year.
...Box.net profile,
online backup and storage
Front Porch Digital Gains GSA Listing
LOUISVILLE, Colo. -
September 2, 2008 - Front Porch Digital today announced that it has
established a listing on the GSA contracting schedule through its collaboration
with government contracting consultant FedResults of Herndon, Va.
The
step affords government agencies easy access to Front Porch Digital's
DIVArchive
line of Content Storage Management products. Government agencies, including
the defense and intelligence communities, are accumulating ever increasing
amounts of video content, and there is an ongoing need for them to preserve and
manage this content indefinitely while having immediate access to it.
Government agencies will have access to Front Porch Digital technologies through
the auspices of FedResults' GSA contract.
...Front Porch Digital
profile, online
storage
AmeriVault Offers Off-Site Restart & Data Recovery for
iSeries Servers
Waltham
MA - August 26, 2008 - AmeriVault today announced the availability of
an advanced, hardware-free, hosted disaster recovery service for iSeries servers
(also known as AS400 or System i) that allows remote access to a virtualized
recovery environment following a disaster.
The foundation of
RestartIT-VDR for iSeries consists of
online backup and
virtualized standby recovery servers hosted at one of AmeriVault's secure,
world-class datacenters.
Should a client encounter an outage or suffer a disaster, rapid
recovery commences: the backup data is recovered to AmeriVault's standby
iSeries server – all achieved remotely for the client. With iSeries'
compression and with GbE connectivity in AmeriVault's datacenters, the recovery
process to AmeriVault's recovery servers can take just a few hours. End users
can then VPN-in to resume operations while the primary systems are rebuilt.
Full recovery is typically achieved in 10 hours or less.
RestartIT-VDR for iSeries allows clients to remotely access
AmeriVault's virtualized iSeries environment for up to 30 days following
the declaration of a disaster – for no additional charge – providing
plenty of time for a company to rebuild its primary systems following a
disaster.
...AmeriVault
profile
Editor's comments:- sounds like a realistically designed service.
In fact many online backup companies offer engineering assisted data recovery as
part of their high end services. For example
CRC Data Protection
has an
enterprise
package which includes shipping media for a bare metal restore - if the
amount of data would take too long to recover online.
Databarracks Unlocks Free Buddybackup
London:-
August 26, 2008 - Today Databarracks announced that it is offering
refunds to all Buddybackup users who have paid for the full version of its
popular Buddybackup software.
The decision comes as Databarracks
removes all of the limitations within the free version of Buddybackup, a
peer-to-peer online backup software used by tens of thousands of people in over
126 countries around the world.
Buddybackup uses the spare space on buddies' computers creating a free
storage trade between you and your friends with no costs; all you need is a
buddy with internet connection and some free disk drive space to share. Files
are backed up in real time and all data is encrypted to military standard so
your data can't be accessed or read by your Buddies.
With a number of free or very low cost
online backup services
failing and leaving many customers without access to their data within the past
year, the Buddybackup solution seems to rise to users' expectations. While other
backup providers are not able to sustain backup service, leaving users' data
irretrievable, Buddybackup users can have multiple copies of their data saved on
friends' or families' computers so that they are always going to be able to get
the data back. Buddybackup also caters for a number of businesses that use the
software to backup their corporate laptops or remote offices back to their own
central storage server.
Currently Buddybackup runs only on Windows XP. However,Databarracks
says it plans to extend this to other OS's including Linux and Mac
...Databarracks
profile,
Backup Software
Technology Leaders Collaborate on Faster Offsite Backup
MINNEAPOLIS,
MN - July 22, 2008 - NetEx today announced that its HyperIP bandwidth
optimization appliance has been certified by FalconStor Software, Inc.
providing mutual customers with a proven application acceleration solution.
The certification follows joint performance testing by NetEx and
FalconStor to prove interoperability of HyperIP in accelerating data rate
performance across TCP/IP transports for FalconStor data protection solutions,
including the FalconStor VTL, DiskSafe, and FileSafe solutions.
...FalconStor
Software profile, ...NetEx
profile, iSCSI
Editor's
comments:- FalconStor's software is built into
disk backup appliances sold
by many oems. So it's good news for customers of those products who can soon
expect to be offered a simple way to incrementally speed up their
offsite backup. | |
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Spellerbyte was surfing the more
nebulous regions of the storage market. | |
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Looking
back at the online backup and storage market
by Zsolt Kerekes,
editor |
This market has seen
many ups and downs in the past decade. The online backup market flared most
brightly at the height of the dotcom boom crazy days in the late 1990s. That
convinced me to create a dedicated page for this subject. You can see an
archived copy of the online backup page circa 2000 -
here.
Back then - I called it "Edrives & web based storage" - because "online
backup" hadn't yet become a standard term back then.
I was
unconvinced about the business models for many of these companies - which mostly
relied on unsustainable web advertising. I'd been making my living from the
sustainable kind (of advertising) - and knew the difference.
Sure
enough - this segment of the storage market got itself a bad reputation for
vendor churn and undependability in the long term.
You can get a
flavor of how the online backup industry changed (and our web site too) in the
years which followed, by clicking these archived links:-
Now
we're in another recession - and you've got to ask yourself this question...
If
banks can fail - then why should you trust ANY online backup provider with your
data?
The answer is - you shouldn't. Because
history has
shown these services can disappear overnight.
But on the other hand -
there are many examples of where online backup has helped their customers
survive in the event of floods, fire etc.
A pragmatic approach - would
be to use 2 different types of offsite backup - which do not have common modes
of failure due to sharing software or geography. That's the way ahead for this
market. | |
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What
are Digital Vaults? - by Cyber-Ark Software
Digital
Vaults enable users across the internet to share access to sensitive information
in a simple secure way.
This article by Cyber-Ark gives a brief
overview on digital vaults and looks at why they are growing in popularity.
...read the
article,
...Cyber-Ark Software
profile,
Storage Security | |
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Dispelling
the Myths of Online Server Backup & Recovery - article by AmeriVault
What's
the impression that comes to your mind when someone mentions - web based
backup?
For years this segment has had a flaky image, due to the rush
of get-rich-quick dotcoms that rushed into web backup around the turn of the
millenium, with unrealistic business plans. Most of them vanished without out
trace not long after.
Well, it's time to revise that image for two
reasons. Firstly, the online backup companies which are still around in 2006 are
those which survived the cold winds of recession which blew away the
fly-by-night operators. Today's internet backup companies survive and thrive
because they offer sound services to real customers. Secondly, this type of
service is now an established part of the storage landscape and is not going to
go away. This article dispells some of the myths about internet backup from the
viewpoint of that experience. ...read the article,
...AmeriVault profile,
Web based backup and
storage
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