Backup Anytime

3 Ireland win national broadband contract.

Three.ie or simply “3″ have won the government contract to provide broadband which will connect the unconnected in Ireland. This is one part of the national broadband scheme. The department of communications reckon that circa 10% of Ireland is outside of any broadband coverage. This does not address however much of the remaining 90% which can avail of broadband of low speed, high contention and very high cost.

The system to be used by “3″ is their own HSDPA 3G solution. There are critics (as with all systems) but my experience of this system (I have limited experience of using it on the move) suggests that while it is obviously inferior to cable it is at worst very usable, not expensive for general browsing and simple to configure to the point of being almost self configuring.

One of the benefits of using the service in isolated areas (where it worked) was the lack of contention due to low user numbers in said areas. This must be a concern as any success in increasing uptake numbers will increase contention.

The communications minister, Eamon Ryan has been quoted as saying broadband availability is ‘central to our economic recovery.’ It is a clear case of fattening the pig the day before the market (maybe even during the bidding) but any progress is welcome. The lack of urgency with which broadband availability, speed and contention has been addressed has been a great cause of confusion amongst business people for some time. Broadband has the power to assist with decentralisation, reducing the rush to under serviced cities and allowing green, sustainable enterprise to flourish in rural areas.

I have looked for information on subsidies, scope and time-lines for this contract but have failed to find anything clear-cut regarding any of these questions. I will add or track-back when further information becomes available.

All in all, this is good news. A plan is in place. A suitable service and provider have been identified and selected. The deciding factors regarding the success of this contract will be the level of service, the strength of support, the extent of the subsidy and the passing on of this subsidy in full to the consumer.

We hope this gets more coverage for all the right reasons.

Online storage, movers, shakers, mergers and closures.

With all the talk of anticipated consolidation in the online storage market due in 2009, it is important to be aware that so far 2008 has not been bereft of position grappling.

xdrive to close (Data backup planned closure)
As detailed in an earlier post, xdrive is to close in early January. This is a planned closure by a giant parent company. This most unusual move sees clients being urged to avail of competing services before the closure date. Not good for the online backup industry. Once bitten, twice as reluctant to give scarce funds and absolute trust to another provider.

Barracuda enters the market (Online backup shaker)
Barracuda online backup will be product and service based. Unlikely to be satisfied with a nich, Barracuda Networks will need to literally change the industry to encourage clients to shell out for online backup specific devices which become client property are are only useful while the service is being used and subscription is maintained. This may sound like a big ask but Barracuda have a history of success with this approach, specifically with their excellent anti spam product and service solutions which we can recommend.

Amazon diversification continues. So does Amazon downtime. (Online storage mixed bag)
Cloud giant Amazon continue to rewrite the online storage book and bring options and confusion to the market with their multiple service offerings, transfer charges and increased interoperability of support for both simple online storage and online backup for wholesalers. Fanfare aside, Amazon downtime this year moves it outside the gold standard.

MediaMax aka The Linkup closed. (Online backup unplanned closure)
Horrible outcome. A scase of clear client data loss becoming a complicated story. If you want to know about online backup horror stories, read the Mediamax online backup failure story.
IBM, acquire Arsenal Digital Solutions. (Online backup mover)
Big blue puts a little footprint in the online backup arena. This story is actually from December 2007 and is interesting not alone because it was felt at the time that big blue would want to become the number one player but also because this didn’t happen. This acquisition may not have created the monster it was expected to but it could happen yet. IBM must want to make the cloud blue with the IBM cloud. See IBM Online Backup.

HP launched its’ online storage product last April. (Online backup mover)
The UPLINE service is based on Opelins’ Titanize and is effectively the HP cloud. UPLINE was a most unfortunate name for the service which was used to make catchy negative media headlines when it went down. See HP Upline goes down.
RBS online backup launched their consumer product for online backup providers. (Online backup mover)
This product is Amazon ready and offers low per licence costs (given large licence quantity purchases) to online backup providers wishing to enter the consumer online storage market. The RBS software backbone is the strong point of this plan. The Amazon component brings potential cost reduction based on quantity and user activity but also the potential Amazon related downtime as detailed above. RBS will continue providing and supporting their award winning online backup software for service providers which in the main is not used as part of an Amazon service. This continues to be their major offering and has grown in success despite many new entrants.
VEMBU TECHNOLOGIES cloud compatibility. (Online backup shaker)
Since we interviewed Sekar Vembu, his company Vembu Technologies which is behind Vembu StoreGrid has announced cloud compatibility for VEMBU software which increases the storage options from VEMBU clients. VEMBU pricing for service providers is based on subscription (or annual renewal) rather than perpetual licensing. Many providers shy away from this model due to concerns about a reduction in ability to reduce fixed and per user costs should the market dictate this is required. It is likely however that such circumstances would dictate a reduction in VEMBU charges which would negate this issue.

Asigra sues Robobak. The “he said, she said” of online backup.
Legal confrontation is the online storage business is not unusual. Most such cases however centre around patents, intellectual copyright, copyrights and even trade names. This case case however is based around one company taking umbrage at the marketing approach and in particular some specific claims in online backup reviews and press releases said to be made by the defendants about Asigra. We stress that this does not relate to a Backupanytime review. We did however interview Ben Puzzuoli in September of this year and found him to be a thoroughly nice fellow.

EMC remain the most respected Giant in online storage. (Online storage Whale and shaker)
EMC already had status on the world of data management. Then they bought some in the form of three significant acquisitions. These being Retrospect backup, MOZY and Iomega external drives. EMC have very cleverly managed to utilise the EMC blue chip name and these acquisitions without prostituting the EMC name or courting controversy.
http://www.backupanytime.com/blog/2008/07/17/emc-corporation-merge-acquisitons/

By the way, 2007 is not over yet. There is more to come. We will report back.

In summary.

It doesn’t matter if you consider 2007 to be pre recession or post boom. It has so far been a busy year for online storage in just about every possible way. Next year will likely see more failures, more acquisitions and lower acquisition prices. What does this spell for the consumer? A dirty mix or risk and value. The bottom line therefore is to seek value for money. Any plan to avail of the cheapest online storage or online backup service will be a short race to partner with the weakest vendor.

Online backup was initially the domain of University communities, then the military, soon afterwards major corporates. Large companies were still the greatest online backup uptake category in late 2007. This year however has seen significant advances in the adoption of online backup by small and medium sized business.

An online backup industry article from byte and switch dated 19th June 2008 quoting researchers In-Stat explained that firms with over 100 people on the payroll were three times more likely to utilise online backup than say a small business. What this article did not address however is that this disparity shows not only a reduction in the uptake differences between small and large companies but also a significant acceleration in the uptake of online backup on the part of small business. Large companies generally have greater uptake level in new technology anyway so the comparisons regarding online backup do not differentiate significantly from other technologies.

Additionally, many very large companies will implement and manage their own online backup system whereas small to medium companies will in the main not do this. This leaves small to medium sized business as the main focus of online backup providers.

This is further evidenced in reports from online backup providers as gathered and detailed by highbeam research. While major corporates will remain a target audience for online backup companies, most of the focus here will be partnerships or divisional services. The major focus continues to be small business and increasingly medium sized companies who need online backup services as an end solution on an outsourced basis.

Online backup market research is limited in usability as a point in time excersice as the market is continually in flux. General, ost believe near global consenus is that the trend for the vast majority of businesses is away from both local and self serviced data backup to online and outsourced.

Barracuda Bitleap takeover

I have been a satisfied Barracuda customer for some time now. They provide email management products and services. They have been at the top of their field for some time. Other services have reduced the gap in recent times but I think it would be fair to say that Barracuda are at least one of the best if not the best specialist anti-spam service providers in the world. Many end users will not be familiar with Barracuda as they provide their services to support their own hardware. Their hardware is not cheap and therefore tends to be the domain  of smaller service providers or companies at least large enough to have a small I.T. department.
Today I received an email from Barracuda inviting me to join a Webinar. I (and probably most people in the data business) receive these emails from various providers and third party companies all the time. I hadn’t participated in a Barracuda webinar for some time and had a close look at the email. The gist of the invitation was that the webinar would present and discuss products and opportunities as a consequence of a recent acquisition by Barracuda. I was hooked. Who did they buy? The email didn’t say. I went on to the barracuda website. No big secret. Straight off I could see there were two recent acquisitions.

The most recent was that of 3sp. The 3sp website, 3sp.com redirects to Barracuda. This will allow Barracuda to offer security solutions in the SSL VPN market.
The second one was of more interest to me. Barracuda have acquired Bitleap. So now Barracuda will be in the data backup business. Yes, but in a different guise. Barracuda are in product and services industries. Their antispam solutions require the purchase of a product and the maintenance by subscription of ongoing services. Barracuda will provide online backup for a monthly fee if you buy a box from them.

This actually makes sense from a number of viewpoints but limits potential uptake due to initial costs and the requirement to make physical network changes. For just about any other online backup service provider, this could represent a well intentioned and brave move with the consequence of near zero uptake. For Barracuda, things could be quite different.
Barracuda and their clients are more than familiar with the business model of combined product and service solutions. In a nutshell, Barracuda does things differently.

Many online backup providers (including ourselves) have considered and to a point ventured in to product and service solutions for online backup. A limited number of our clients have hardware solutions provided by us specifically for the purpose of backing up online. Barracudas brave move allows no middle road. If you don’t buy the box you don’t get the service. They applied this to anti spam services bar the facility for end users to get the service from third party I.T. providers who bought the box. This won’t work in online backup due to storage protection costs so it will (outside of ground breaking technology advances) be a no product no servie offering.

If they apply this with online backup and do it successfully, they could literally change the industry. A player like Barracuda could open the door for all of us by making online backup product purchase a normal pre service procedure. Given the choice, most providers would prefer this for the following reasons.

Uniformity of client hardware.
Simple replacement.
Hardware scaled to backup requirement.
Client less likely to move provider (hardware may also be useless should they do so)
Remote support made far less complicated.

I don’t actually know if the webinar is about the 3sp acquisition or the more interesting (for me) Bitleap takeover. Will I report back after the Webinar? Of course I will.