News

posted on 20 February 2008 10:04

Symantec is introducing two cloud-based, Software-as-a-Service (Saas), backup services. Its Protection Network services provide Online Backup and Online Backup for Backup Exec for SMBs.

Symantec Online Backup provides customers with secure, reliable, online backup and recovery capabilities based on Symantec's data protection technology, at a cost-effective price point.

Symantec Online Storage for Backup Exec is integrated with Backup Exec 12, creating the market's first hybrid software as a service solution. Backup Exec customers can now immediately protect their critical data both onsite and offsite, for a total disaster recovery solution.

The company says its cloud services offers businesses added protection and peace of mind by backing up critical information to expertly-managed, reliable data storage maintained in Symantec-operated data centers. In addition, businesses have the flexibility to browse their data files, manage their protection settings and initiate restores from anywhere via an easy-to-use web browser interface over the Internet.

Asigra, with its Televaulting service, and EMC with its Mozy offering based on a so-called Fortress, and even Roxio, will all be company for Symantec in cloud-based backup and so will, I expect, dozens of other companies. Virtually all existing backup product vendors will look at offering a cloud-based backup utility service as a way of keeping their customers their customers and not losing them to EMC, Symantec or some other online backup vendor.

The hybrid strategy, offering an online target as an option for existing backup software alongside existing disk and tape targets will proove highly attractive as there are precious few user interface changes and user adoption would be swift and easy.

Blou Baker, network administrator at Symantec customer, Tucker Rocky Distributing, said: "With Symantec Online Backup, we have a way to backup and protect our information online, strengthening our existing backup and recovery strategy and reducing the burden of dealing with tapes."

Another customer, Christopher Booth, IT director at Telsco Industries dba Weathermatic, said: "Symantec Online Backup requires no up-front investment in hardware or software and provides us with a highly reliable backup solution that can easily fit into our existing IT data backup policies."

Another option is to add automatically-scheduled online backups to reduce the admin burden still further. The first backup could be to local disk, for speed purposes, and then the disk backup target could send the backed up, and possibly, probably, deduplicated data (to reduce WAN bandwidth needs) off over the Internet to an online service provider's vault.

For Symantec its Protection Network offers the possibility of unifying its separate Net Backup and Backup Exec customer bases, which must be an enticing proposition. IT is also positioning Online Backup for Backup Exec (OBBE?) as a long-term storage medium; in other words an archive vault.

Symantec Protection Network will be available through Symantec's channel partners and the Symantec website. For additional information, visit www.spn.com.

Online Backup for Backup Exec starts at $38/month for 10GB. Online Backup starts at $25/month for 5GB.