Backup Anytime

Online backup humour for a new year.

Got this in a new years greeting from Sekar Vembu of Vembu technologies. Seems like a take on the Mastercard add. Mastercard adds put a price on physical objects and then described the purpose of the purchases as priceless. Similar theme but appropriate to online backup and the limits of what can be restored.

This is surely the last Backupanytime post of 2008.

Happy new year!

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.

Vembu Technologies release StoreGrid SPE 2.3.5

Vembu Technologies have released the latest version of Service Provider Edition software. This release further increases the efficiency and service possibilities which Vembu Service providers can offer their clients. Vembu have acquired a name for very stable product update releases in an industry which is always in flux and this will encourage service providers to upgrade and offer the advantages to clients with minimal delay.

Regular readers will be familliar with the Vembu CEO, Sekar Vembu who was interviewed here recently in relation to the great strides being made by Vembu Technologies in the SPE storage software market.

Some of the changes and associated benefits of Version 2.3.5 are as follows.

1. Single page all backup status reports and email reports

2. Backup window intervals for StoreGrid to take backups

3. Consolidated customer report   

4. On demand invoicing

5. Email alerts for licenses and disk space shortage

The numeric order of the above benefits is here for readability only. This is by no means a full feature report and is not placed in order of importance. 

In short, this technology news is from Vembu Technologies. You found an intro here from a non biased third party. (We use several solutions, the best of which we have discussed here and indeed interviewed a number of online backup C.E.O.s)

If you want to avail of an online backup service contact us. If you want to run your own professional online backup service, Vembu Technologies may be a very good place to start and this release may present the advantage of excellent timing.

Backupanytime interview with Sekar Vembu of Vembu Technologies.

Backupanytime exclusive:

When we approached Vembu Technologies about interviewing Sekar Vembu we expected that if an interview were to be granted (and we certainly didn’t assume it would) it would be at some stage in the distant future and possibly with another senior representative of Vembu Technologies. Imagine our surprise and excitement when we were informed within days by Sekar himself that he would do an interview himself and that he was available for the following weeks main interview post. You didn’t visit this page to read our narative so without further ado, we will got to this most insightful interview.

1. Name

Sekar Vembu

2. Company.

Vembu Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

3. Position.

Founder and CEO

4. Marital status, family members.

Married. My wife’s name is Vidhya. We have 2 Kids - a four and half year old son, Sanjay and a two and a half year old daughter, Shreya.

5. Education

B.Tech, Mechanical Engineering and M.S, Operations Research - both from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, India

6. Pastimes / Hobbies

I am never able to answer this question since my 5th grade. Not that I am a workaholic - far from it, I personally believe I am quite a lazy and laid back guy - unless I can motivate myself with some sense of purpose. I also seem to have a ’single tasking brain’ wherein I have to do anything with single minded focus. Otherwise, I do not feel like I am doing anything worthwhile. Of course, you know what I am focused on right now!

The only other activity where I used to be self-motivated was sport; especially during my college days where I used to take my Cricket and Badminton more seriously than my academics. But nowadays, I seem to enjoy
doing random and aimless reading on the Internet - the only reading I do, by the way.

7. What type of car do you drive?

I drive a Honda CRV which I’d bought when my daughter was born.

8. How long are you in the online backup business?

We have been doing this for about 4 years now. I do not want to pretend that I had a vision of the opportunity in this domain when we started out. In fact, when we started to develop a product in the Storage and Backup domain, our idea was completely different. We initially developed a Peer to Peer Backup product for SOHOs, SMBs and Home Networks. And that is where the name StoreGrid comes from. That is, storage in a grid with unused space in other computers in a network.

While we got a good number of customers & passionate users, we also got a couple of IT solution providers who started using StoreGrid to offer an online backup service to their customers. We saw a pattern there, and decided to put our focus on the online backup domain. We then started improving StoreGrid to make it especially easy for IT solution providers and MSPs to host and provide their own online backup service to their customers.

In retrospect, we believe we made the right choice as we have seen and continue to see a phenomenal growth opportunity here.

9. What are the distinguishing features of your company over the competition?

I would prefer to focus on our company’s strengths without claiming that it is something unique to us over the competition!

We have an extremely hard working culture with a collective single minded focus on delivering a world class product backed by world class technical support. I am very fond of saying “Fire in the belly counts more than smarts”. I see that fire in all the people here at Vembu! Our people have the drive to “do what it takes” to be the best. Because of this culture, I strongly believe, we have a superior capability to serve our partners and customers better than anyone else and therefore aim to be the best in our business segment.

10. What are the achievements of which you are most proud?

I am quite proud of the fact that as a business we were able to sign up close to a thousand MSP/Service Provider partners across the world in a short period of time - and that too, just on the strength of our product, rather than creating and riding on hype.

In this context, I should add that I am not someone who is easily satisfied. When I achieve something which I set out to achieve, it appears trivial to me after I achieve it. Call it a classic case of the journey and the
anticipation of reaching a destination being more rewarding than reaching the destination itself, but I think this is the reason I am able to sustain
my motivation and drive for a long period of time. So, we have a long way to
go before I would (if ever) feel fully satisfied and truly be proud of our
achievements.

11. Where do you see the industry going?

I have a very positive outlook on the online backup industry for the long term. If you consider the SMB market segment which is the segment we typically focus on (through our service provider partners), I believe we have just scratched the surface when it comes to adoption of online backups. As broadband bandwidth improves and price of storage falls further, it would make even more business sense to keep your important data in a ’service provider managed’ storage cloud. I feel this is an inevitable transformation that will happen over the next 5 years.

I also believe the industry will not consolidate around just a couple of players. Backup is not like skype where you install & forget it and it just works (most of the time, at least). It is much more complex and it requires constant monitoring and management. Very simply, that is the nature of the beast! Therefore, the MSPs and the IT solution providers have a very crucial role to play. So as the online backup industry evolves it will be more and more a channel play for us, the software vendors.

12. What advice would you give to business people who have data backup concerns?

I do not think there is any preaching required to convince anyone abut the criticality of protecting business data. Everyone is hopefully aware of that.

So my first and foremost advice is to not treat data backup as something which can be run on auto-pilot. Data backup is not about just the software or the storage. Business people should realize that data protection is more of a process. You either need to have an internal ‘champion’ who worries about a robust process to protect your critical data or you should simply outsource this function to a local MSP or an IT solution provider.

I hear lots of people talking about online backup being a commodity! I strongly believe that this is very misleading; I urge business people to not fall for such rhetoric. It is true that storage is becoming a commodity but data backup is not and never will be. Data protection is a process and the data protection software is a facilitator of such a process. As with any process, these processes have to keep evolving as your business evolves and that is the reason you need a champion to continuously improve the data protection processes and ensure it addresses all eventualities.

13. What advice would you give to I.T. companies considering offering online backup to their clients?

I am sure the IT solution providers and MSPs know fully well that online data backup is a serious business. So, what ever I mentioned above as ‘advice to businesses’ apply to them too. If you are offering an online backup service, never treat it as something running on auto-pilot. There are so many ways things can go wrong. You should have a robust process in place to make sure that when things go wrong you are aware of it and are in a position to quickly take corrective action. This is the fundamental reason online data backup cannot be provided as a commodity service - especially for serious businesses. As trusted advisors, solution providers have a big role to play in educating their business customers. If you try to commodotize yourself by competing with the consumer focused mega online storage vendors, you will never have satisfied customers in the long run.

14. From where do you get your inspiration?

This is a tough one. Quite honestly, I really do not know. If I try to make something up, it will sound more like a platitude rather than something which comes from my heart. I think there is some fundamental urge we all have to succeed and make a difference to the world. I feel these are questions you can honestly answer after you’ve succeeded in a big way; of course, that’s also when you can get away with sounding banal.

15. Where do you see yourself in five years time?

As a business I am very confident that in five years we would be reasonably successful. Beyond that, I never really like to predict how big our business will be. But one thing I am quite sure of is that we would be serving a much wider segment of the data protection market place than we are serving today and I foresee ourselves working with tens of thousands of partners.

Personally, I will be just two times twenty one years old in five years. And I am sure I would still feel as young as ever - with the same “fire in my belly”.

Ed. Thanks Sekar for your frank and insightful look at the industry from the viewpoint of a leading company principal.

Visitors, want to see more who’s who in data? Then watch next weeks who’s who in data.

Who’s who in the data industry?

Interviews are arranged by invitation only. Please do no contact us canvasing or requesting an interview. We do not respond to such requests regardless of the request origin. If you are very keen to be interviewed and genuinely believe you have a story of significance which is specific to the data industry, your only possible option to add yourself to the interview list is to go through someone who has already been interviewed. Requests from previous interviewees to include an associate will be reviewed.

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10. Interview with Dr. Mickey Zandi of SunGard Availability Services. (Published 23 October 2008)

Dr. Zandi is Practice Area Managing Partner with SunGard Availability Services. Backupanytime in house opinion is that this is the best interview we have run yet. This says much given the high quality of interviewee we have become accustomed to. While Dr. Zandi is undoubtedly an excellent ambassador for SunGard Availability Services, his determination to answer all questions using his expertise in a manner which makes his answers informative and impressive rather than just the latter demonstrates the positive ethos of SunGard.

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9. Interview with Top Layer Security, Ken Pappas Vice President of Marketing and company secutity strategist.(Published 16th October 2008)

Harvard University’s data is sorted according to protocol family using a cluster of Top Layer 4508 IDS Balancers. Ken is Marketing VP of Top Layer and this high level interview has been facilitated by Matt Flanagan of Fama PR.

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8. Interview with Adam Famularo, SVP & GM Recovery Management and Data Modeling business, CA. (Published 9 October 2008)

CA (still commonly known as Computer Associates) is one of the largest management software providers in the world. Adam represents the largest company we have had on the Who’s who (I don’t think anyone will dispute this!) and we appreciate his participation and eagerly await this interview.

Many thanks to Michael Kornspan, Sr. Principal, Communications for C.A. for his help without which this would not have been possible.

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7. Interview with Struan Robertson of Pinsent Masons and out-law.com (Published 3rd October 2008)

Struan Robertson is a lawyer focusing on technology law with Pinsent Masons. He is also the very well known Editor of excellent technology law website out-law.com which is likely the most respected accessible public technology law website in the U.K.

We are very excited about this interview as we are frequent visitors to out-law.com and consider it an excellent resource regarding the legal position on current and emerging technologies.

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6. Interview with David Whitelegg of itsecurityexpert.co.uk (Published 26th September 2008)

David is an I.T. security expert from (appropriately) itsecurityexpert.co.uk and despite his intended attendance at the PCI SSC (payment card security) conference in Orlando for most of next week he will participate in our “Who’s who in data”. It will obviously be a very busy week for him. Many thanks in advance David. We look forward to our first data security specific interview and are proud to have managed an appointment with an inside industry expert.

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5. Interview with Ben Puzzuoli of Robobak.com (Published 19th September 2008)

All of our interviewees have a connection. That connection is storage. The specifics range from software through to actual storage. There are however other connections. This weeks interviewee, Ben Puzzuoli of ROBOBAK was introduced to us by a previous interviewee, Brian R.Bondy of VisionWorks. Want to know more about Ben and Robobak? Click the link above and hear it from the man himself.

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4 Interview with Marcus Mac Innes of Pix.ie (Published 13th September 2008)

Our regular blog readers will know that Marcus is the CEO of Pix.ie and that his company has featured as part of the Tuesday Push some weeks back. We were so impressed we asked Marcus to join our “Who’s who in data?” interviewee list and he kindly obliged. I have had a sneak preview. Our first Irish interviewee has not let the side down (:  Do not miss this one.

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3 Interview with Brian R. Bondy of Visionworks. (Published 4th September 2008)

Brian’s company VisionWorks has opened an important niche in the online backup industry and specifically with open file management facilities for software providers. A riveting read.

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2 Interview with Sekar Vembu of Vembu Technologies. (Published 28 August 2008)

Sekar speaks candidly about his company and his vision. VEMBU has very quickly become a major player in the data backup industry. Sekar has a strong record in the I.T. business and VEMBU Technologies is so close to his heart he gave it his name.

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1 Interview with Rob Cosgrove of Remote Backup Systems. (Published 21 August 2008)

Many thanks to Rob for being the first interviewee. His involvement has made it easier for us to get the attention of other highly important people in the data backup industry. For his input we are most thankful.

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Want to ask you own question? Would like to avail of the combined knowledge base of an international poo of data experts? No problem. Just ask the data experts!

Pipeline list (Agreed in person, with representative or through media contact. Date not set)

Interview with Eugene Kaspersky of kaspersky Lab (Antivirus expert. Pipeline : Agreed, date not set)

Interview with Bruce Schneier of schneier.com (Data security expert, Author: Agreed, date not set)

interview with Mr. Virendra Mane of Qualex Systems (Man and company behind the AVANASstorage excellence NAS sofware : Agreed, date not set)