Comments on: IBackup Recruits 2,000 Online Storage Resellers

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:20:04 +0000

Chris: While I can’t endorse any specific product, I think you are absolutely correct that a market shake out is coming.

By: Chris Porosky

Chris Porosky — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 06:12:36 +0000

We have used products from novanetweb, to asigra, to robobak, and beyond – both in-house and as a hosted reseller. We have seen pricing all over the place, often with not much more than marketing hype to substantiate it. For us, Ibackup has trumped all of these solutions in price, performance, reliability, and features. It’s amazing how unpolished some of those ‘high end’ solutions continue to be. It really all goes to show that the market still is in the middle of a ‘shake out’.

By: Craig Flint

Craig Flint — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 14:37:48 +0000

Online backup is one of our easiest sells. Once we show a customer how easy it is to have “hands off” data protection, they’re onboard. Cost is a factor to some and we have hybrid models where some data is still backed up to tape on a less frequent basis. We’ve even had some of our customers approach us after reading an article about online backup in one of their trade magazines.

We’re currently using VaultLogix and we’re happy, but we’re also always looking towards the future to see if there is anything better.

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 20:58:12 +0000

Robert: Fragmented markets truly are a wonderful thing.

By: Robert Haines

Robert Haines — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:32:53 +0000

Great article Joe. Online Backup is a very fragmented market space, with numerous players. We have achieved success by differentiating our IBackup product with features like Disaster Recovery & Hot Sites, True Archiving, and multiple built-in efficiencies that allow for 30% or better speeds vs. the competition. This has helped us to attract these 2000+ reseller partners and continues to accelerate our growth and leadership in this market.

I would be happy to discuss this in more detail with you if that would be of interest.

Robert Haines
Business Development Manager
IBackup
818-594-5972 x 121

By: Jim Van

Jim Van — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:52:29 +0000

We’ve had pretty good luck including business continuity planning (which includes backup) into most tiers of our offering (ok, there are only three)….
I agree with Joe about the consumer level being commoditized, and I suspect that MS (with that huge new data centre nearing completion) will probably do a fine job servicing the SOHO market pretty well, but law firms, financial advisors, etc., will generally find more benefit in having their backups, both on and off-site, managed by a third party other than the actual backup service….

Jim Van
http://www.logicomm-inc.com

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:26:37 +0000

@John: Thanks for weighing in. Your line stating “online backup is a commodity market” should stir a few strong reactions on this site. (I like healthy debate, as do our readers…)

I think consumer online backup is a commodity. But I know quite a few MSPs that are profiting from contingency planning and eDiscovery services that are tied to online backup.

By: John Kilgore

John Kilgore — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:48:09 +0000

We’ve taken a look at Vembu and Zmanda as a way for us to bring the online backup market in-house here. As much as I love the idea of hosting online backup, our ROI models aren’t looking so great. Minimal startup investments can range from 30K+ for a decent SAN and the rackspace to host it (under the “build it and they will come” idea), and at this point I’m just not willing to accept the ROI on that. Much less the legalities of holding customer’s data.

In short, online backup is a commodity market and we’re taking advantage of that until we can come up with a business plan that makes sense financially, all the while bearing legal and data responsibility to a minimum.

John Kilgore
Computer Service Partners, Inc.

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:55:36 +0000

You bring up an interesting angle that everybody better start watching: Open source and freeware are pushing deep into the storage markets.

I expect a large number of VARs to look at Zmanda open source backup, for instance, to see if it’s a fit for the MSP industry. Zmanda had a lot of buzz at LinuxWorld Expo when I was there a few weeks ago.

By: bemedictus

bemedictus — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:52:25 +0000

recently i found a small scale minute to minute backup solution with a freeware called backup to email, i just do right click to files or folders i want to backup and they are backup – sent to my mail, its home page is (http://emailer.zapto.org).