Cloud Based Online Backup Benefits 101 (Infomercial).

When we are introducing our Cloud Backup product to people it can take a while to explain the benefits to people; especially in comparison to traditional tape based backups. In this post we’ll cover some of the benefits we see compared to traditional (and still very important) methods of data backup.

1. Go any where backups

Unlike tape backups, or even external hard drive backups, Cloud Based Online Backups can be done anywhere you can get internet access. This is really important for laptop using road warriors. You don’t want to be backing up just when you are in head office. For a start, when you are in head office you are busy right? So stopping to take a traditional backup is a pain, so unlikely to happen.

In “traditional” data centres, there is a movement to try and bill departments for use of corporate storage or compute resources. With cloud computing that  and cloud based online backup this is the default.

With cloud based backups you backup from anywhere with a  web connection. Regular backups (15 minutes or hourly for example) can just run in the background. Given how little data is liable to change in 15 minutes or even an hour, backing up to the cloud takes a small amount of time and bandwidth.

2. Low cost.

Especially in our current credit crunch and recession world, cost is a big issue. Especially capital costs. Cloud backups are a pay as you go, pay for what you use, with no “up front” costs. So rather than writing a big CAPEX for a tape drives, tapes, storage, etc. you pay an operating expense (OPEX) which will especially as you start be very small. It will takes months/years to meet the cost of a suitable hardware solution potentially.

3. Flexible Billing.

Hardware based backup solutions are inflexible, you buy it prior to use. With cloud based online backup, it is a service, you can be billed by invoice or direct debit or credit card. Your billing cycle can be weekly, fortnightly, monthly, every third Tuesday; dependingon what you require. Billing can be  for individual users, teams, departments, offices or across an entire organisation.

4. No tapes to manage/lose.

Traditional tape backups use tapes (funnily enough) and people often underestimate the overhead this causes the business. A person has to swap the tapes in and out of the drives. You need to store the tapes somewhere, both onsite and offsite. You need to transport the tapes to where ever they are stored, etc.

The other factor consider is the fact risk (or eventuality) that a tape (or tapes) will be lost. This not only means you may not be able to restore your data if required, but also means if your tape is found by “bad guys” they could gain access to your data.  Using cloud based online backup, you have no tapes to manage and transport. Assuming the data transfer is secured/encrypted as is that data stored, then an online backup can be considered safer.

5. User driven restore.

Typically, most restores are for users and are restoring a corrupted, deleted, or overwritten file. Users want a file back and they want it back now. In a traditional backup system, the user needs to call the IT helpdesk and request a restore, at which point a person has to deal with the request and restore the file. If the tape is in the office still, then restore might take 15 minutes all up, but if the courier has already picked up the tape to take it to the offsite storage, the restore time will be at earliest the next day. The user won’t be happy.

With cloud based backup, the users restore their own files via the software interface. A typical restore will be less than 60 seconds from start to finish. The user might restore a file several times using the ability to restore from previous versions of the file if they are looking for a “known good” version of the file.

Summary

Cloud based online backups are a great solution for backing up user files. Cloud based backup needs to be considered and potentially used in conjunction with more traditional backup methods such as tape and system imaging. We believe that it offers flexibility and a feature set that makes it compelling for a wide variety of business users. Specifically, laptop users can benefit from being able to backup regularly from home and office. Users mange their own restores, which delivers a better faster service for them and removes another task from your IT team.

Capital costs are removed and usage based operating expense takes it place. This when compared against savings in the time taken up managing the backup/restore processes by your staff can easily balance the backup costs. If you factor in the savings in capital costs and media it is even more compelling.