Popularizing online backup

If the traffic growth to this website is any indication, online backup is fast becoming an accepting service offering for home as well as small businesses. The question is why now?

There are probably several answers to this question. The first is that in an economic climate where we are all waiting around for businesses around us to fall over, everyone is looking for ways to secure their data with the least expensive way possible without compromising on security.

The thing is, for most small businesses, PC backup is either something they have never done before, or something that currently involves tapes or external hard drives being locked up in the safe or the boot of your car.

Both of these alternatives are quite time consuming and carry their own suite of risks, not to mention costs. With the recent fires here is Victoria, many small businesses have had a wake-up call as to the real threat that a natural or even man-made disaster can be to a business (I am not referring to physical shop or furnishings).

So in short, online backup is getting more attention by the press and the consumer because the market is looking for alternatives that are simple and cost effective.

The second reason for the growing popularity of online backup is that the market is becoming far more accepting of what cloud computing can actually do. There have been several high profile providers of online backup that have already fallen by the way side. Maybe the solution wasn’t right or they were ahead of their time. Today’s consumer is however more ready than ever for cloud computing and services such as Google’s Gmail and Docs have better conditioned them for it. Just as importantly, the internet is playing such a key role in our home and business lives that we have accepted the fact that a good part of our lives is and always will be online.

Carbonite has been around for several years now and importantly it has significant financial backing behind it. But it’s not just the backing that makes the operation secure, it’s actually got a real and growing client base of over 600,000 paying customers (not free users). Add to this the fact that its product range is also growing. There was the launch of the Mac version in April and later this year we will see the much anticipated SMB version.

What we (Carbonite Australia) have found to date is that a lot of our interest is coming from small business owners who are realising that their data is critical and that it actually lives on their PC not in the filing cabinet. For some it’s a risk, when you compare it to using traditional backup such as hard drives, but at $72, its worth the risk at least for a year. Most admit that they are curious and want to try it. I dare say that at some stage during the subscription, they will need to do even a basic restore, so they should get their monies worth.

We believe that online storage and backup has a great future in Australia and at the price point that we compete in ($6 per month for backing up your PC’s hard drive) you would be pressed to find a better remote backup solution.

For those still hesitant we offer a free 30 day trial. The June issue of PC Authority has a free 6 month trial, which is plenty of time to try it and like or dislike it.

The future of cloud computing for the everyday small business is definitely here.