Backup Anytime

xdrive stop charging customers

There has been much talk and speculation about X-Drive for some time now. As of one week ago they stopped charging clients and those same clients have until January 12th to remove their data.

The biggest question is: What happens to clients who do not know about or react in time to the closure?
The official xdrive answer is this.
“After January 12, 2009, you will no longer be able to access your Xdrive account. All files and data will be permanently deleted and you will no longer be able to retrieve your files.”

This is unbelievable. Need it from the horses mouth? Here, see question 3 on xdrive will delete client data.

This is hardly the level of data protection one would expect. This is not the level of data availability which would have been considered acceptable at sign-up. As for data loss, well this looks to be a future data loss story for some. Having an online store (Thinking you have an online data store) could cause recklessness at the client end and while this may be questionable from the clients responsibility viewpoint they can hardly be responsible all on their own.

An obvious and far from well though out response to the horror of this would be to say that a closing entity can not and should not keep client data. A little more client concern would surely result in at the very least a far longer zero charge period. Notice during the paying period does not equate to giving something to those clients who are inconveniencedand may be ruined by the closure. Realistically, any inability to directly communicate the details of the intended closure with verified response from every single client should be seen as of absolute importance. Logs of verified client end account closure could provide a list of accounts which have not been closed. A good communications campaign should result in a short list of accounts pertaining to uninformed or unresponsive clients. These accounts could then be kept open or at least the data retained for a far greater non billing period than two months.
After all, many providers will give a two month trial. If this can be offered to potential clients, many of whom will never pay, surely a far greater period could be given to actual clients.
This all blows smoke in the face of the real question. Why close xdrive?
The answer has obviously to do with financials but the proximatecause of this type of result generally has more to do with aggressive client acquisition through weak cost benefit analysis.

This is common in the data storage industry. You the end user are offered much space and limited functionality and support on the basis of economies of scale and guesstimates about data transport cost.

If the provider gets it wrong, ie the other clients don’t join and behave as anticipated this makes your online storage “data non gratis” and at risk of suffering the plight of the xdrive client.

The moral of the story is that you get what you pay for. If this was lucrative for AOL this would not be happening. If it was considered viable by outside entities (and this does not require it to be lucrative) it would be bought. There will however be no buyout or merger honeymoon for xdrive clients. For most it is provider divorce. For some it may be data divorce.

Ask the data experts.

New! (October 2008)

Following of from the continuing success of the “Who’s who in data” interview series we have decided to allow you to ask the questions! Simply respond to this post using the standard comment option below. Present your question in the comment. Given the question is appropriate we will publish it and ask it of an expert from the “Who’s who in data” interview series. The expert asked will be chosen based on the relevance of their experience and expertise to your question and their willingness to answer. The chosen expert may therefore be from a past, present or yet to be published interview.

The real benefit here is that information on this page will be provided in order of readers wishes rather than the interview chronological order of the main “Who’s who in data” section.

Appropriate questions may be asked regarding any of the following.

Data protection, data management, data law, data backup, data security, data storage, data de-duplicattion, data technology, data privacy and yes you’ve got it. anything of relevance to the data industry.

Go ahead, all you have to do is ask! Click on comment and type your question.

Business person without data protection today! Donkey!

Want to continue in business? Get business continuity.

All the talk these days is based around the global credit crisis, recession, future outlook and financial opinion. It would appear that one persons opinion is as likely to be wrong or right than that of any other. The abiding consensus among business people who by their nature tend to be optimists is that the good times will come back. Sounds hopeful? Yes, but it is also something that is likely to be proved right in time as was the previous vision of meltdown provided by economists.

These people in the main therefore want to continue in business. They better get business continuity in place. The better ones will. Business continuity is essential for many reasons including and not exclusive to data compliance, client protection, data availability and indeed business survival.

So, what must one do. In a nutshell (and that is all this post is) you need to ensure that the data you retain passes the following criteria.

Permissible : You must ensure you have the right to retain data regardless of format.

Backed up : In addition to ensuring that data does not get in to the wrong hands you must also ensure that it remains available to you.

Protected : You must take adequate measures to ensure that any access to this data is appropriate and by appropriate persons. Do not confuse this with backup. Just because you retain a copy of data does not mean it is safe from unauthorised persons.

Revised : Data store compliance needs to be managed. Any data which you held with permission and rights last month may not be yours to use today.

Destroyed. You must remove data before it passes it’s appropriate usage date. Simple deletion is not actual deletion. A simple delete function merely tells the system, to mark the data as not required should hard drive space become needed. Modern drive sizes dictate that in many cases this rarely or never happens. You could be shocked and more seriously affected by the amount of supposedly deleted data which could be retrieved with minimal effort from your systems.

Managed : All of these factors need to be managed in conjunction with each other. This may require software, hardware and outside assistance. Most regions and many industries also require the appointment of a data protection officer. In small business environments this is generally someone with other existing tasks.

Sounds expensive? It need not be.

Sounds like a requirement? Yes (with variances on requirement level depending on location and industry)

Sounds urgent? Now is a good time. Anytime after a data outage is too late.

Sound important? How would your clients feel if they felt the data you have relating to them was not protected? Not to mention the consequences of it becoming public as a consequence of your non compliance.

Sounds scary? No soundbites or frighteners here. This is reality.

Want to take action?

Contact backupantime today and speak in absolute confidence with Ireland’s favourite online backup providers.

What is an Irish online backup service?
Strictly speaking, an Irish online backup service is one which is based in Ireland and which backs up in Ireland. If you want to be pedantic you would exclude from this list multinational companies with an Irish base or those with no Irish client base.

So now we know what it is why is it so important?
If you are based in Ireland it is very important for a number of reasons

Data availability.
If you have a data communications problem (which often accompanies a data loss scenario) having your data thousands of miles away will not be conducive to rapid restore.

Support (local)
The nearer a supplier is to you (all other things being equal) the greater the support they can and will provide. You may not need much online backup support day to day but this will change when you have an outage and are under serious time constraints.

Support (general)
Most Irish online backup providers are small businesses and offer a very personal level of support. Multinational companies offering online backup commonly offer email only or help desk (web ticket) only support. This type of support may be OK for web hosting or email management but if you have a data loss situation at hand you will want to talk to real people promptly and have the facility for desk-side support and hand holding at every stage of the recovery process. Even if an international provider allows you to skip the ticketing system, a distant and non personal call centre with 99 juniors to 1 unavailable technician is not conducive to rapid, successful restore.

Compliance.
Depending on the legal entity of your organisation and the type of data you use, you may be required to retain your data in Ireland. Seek professional advice before backing up with a non Irish online backup provider if you are not sure.

Shipping.
If you have a large amount of data, a seed install may require shipping of encrypted data. The shorter and less complicated the secured shipment is the better. This may be used more than once as seed restore is not uncommon and is very advantages in a comms outage environment.

Compliance (future)
Data compliance requirements generally is becoming more strict. If you do manage to find an International provider who can somehow (and this is difficult to imagine) provide the same service as someone based in Ireland, there is every possibility that while this may be OK from a compliance perspective now, it could cause compliance issues later. Add to this that moving online backup providers is not as straightforward as changing utilities providers (you will be starting your archive anew with a new supplier) and you can see it is important to get it right from the outset.

We have provided a list of Irish online backup providers for your perusal.

Uptake of backupanytime online backup services in Dublin has increased by in excess of 20% in the past six months.

Some of this is as a consequence of new Dublin based field sales agents with the remainder likely being attributable to the level of hits our website receives from Dublin based browsers as released in an earlier post.

Online backup in Dublin has been strong since the facility to securely backup online became available. The pervasiveness of Dublin online backup across the spectrum of business types is what distinguishes online backup in Dublin from that of other areas.

The small medium enterprise market in Dublin has moved to online backup at a much greater rate than the remainder of the country. The obviousness of the size of the Dublin market is not the only reason as this holds through on a per capita basis.

Backupanytime is Galway based and despite having a very strong presence in Galway with a large number of long term clients, the number of Dublin clients will (before end of 08) soon exceed the number of Galway clients on our books.

While the geographic nature of clients shows Dublin online backup users to be the largest grouping per capita, the geographic spread of online backup providers is somewhat more complicated.

A cursory search will list a large number of online backup providers purporting or inferring an Irish connection. A little homework will show that many of these are not based in Ireland and some with Dublin addresses for their online backup services are actually using virtual Dublin office addresses to be included in the Dublin online backup market results.

Add to this that there are some Dublin based online backup providers who send their client data outside of Ireland and simply operate their sales and support office from Dublin.

There is nothing untoward about this. You should however be aware that it is good practice to ensure your data is retained in Ireland and that you can avail of support in Ireland. It is therefore important that you gather information from prospective providers confirming their actual location and the location of their data store and data mirrors.

In conclusion, include geographic queries in addition to quality of service and pricing questions you may have when talking to prospective online backup providers. Seek a testimonial list relative to your region and understand that a backup service based in India for example may have cost benefits but will also have serious access limitations in the event of a provider outage.

Backupanytime have excellent Dublin client references and have been supporting Dublin online backup clients with the level of regional data availability which is conducive to effective general restore and disaster recovery requirements.