John is your typical tradie, has a van full of tools and parts and stuff, spends 30% of his day travelling between jobs and the 70% working on someone’s property around Melbourne either fixing an existing home or assisting with the building of a new one. I should add that John is also an Electrician and has been for his whole working life.
Over the past 20 years of being in the trade, he has worked for others (when he was starting out), worked in a partnership (him and another partner) and now runs his own business, working primarily on his own.
When he started the partnership with one of his work mates, one day each week was dedicated to doing accounts. They would work at his partner’s home, creating their invoicing via MYOB, processing it and ensuring that their accounts where up to date and most importantly paid.
One thing he never had to worry about was backup. I suspect he didn’t even know whether he had it or not. When I asked him he told me that they did backups on CD. After some more prodding it turns out they gave their accountant the MYOB files every quarter on CD and that was his backup. Sounds typical.
How many small business people do you know that only backup their files (MYOB files in this case) once a quarter? How many of these micro business people can afford to lose it all?
After close to 10 years of being in a partnership John decided to go it alone. Created his own company, created a business name and began trading. One of the first things he had to contend with however was his accounts. Now that his partner was no longer in the picture, he had to do all of it himself.
His PC at home was archaic and would often crash. However this is all he had. He purchased a licence of MYOB and started working. I told him time and time again that backup was key, particularly given the instability of his hardware. He continued to rely upon his BAS CD.
Again with some prodding, he admits that his BAS records to his accountant where his backup. I will confidently assume that his accountant kept a backup of all of their accounting records, local and offsite.
After about 12 months, he decided it was time to upgrade and has his eyes set on an Apple Mac. Looks great on his desk. John even purchased an external drive to do his backup. His Time Capsule offers 1TB of space.
Included with Time Capsule is Time Machine. I have heard so much about Time Machine and how Apple users claim it to be their saviour from backup disasters.
This what the Apple store says about it:
Time Machine works with your Mac and an external hard drive. Just connect the drive and assign it to Time Machine and you’re a step closer to enjoying peace of mind. Time Machine will automatically back up your entire Mac, including system files, applications, accounts, preferences, music, photos, movies, and documents. But what makes Time Machine different from other backup applications is that it not only keeps a spare copy of every file, it remembers how your system looked on a given day — so you can revisit your Mac as it appeared in the past
Automatic, daily restore points, linked to an external drive, all sounds really good. This is what John is now relying on. He was sold on the idea that automatic backup would give him piece of mind, ensuring should his Mac get stolen or suffer some major damage that his business files would be saved.
In typical tradie style, John still hasn’t connected Apple’s Time Machine to his Mac. It has been over a year since he purchased it. So the only backup he has, is again the CD that he delivers to his accountant each quarter. You see, linking external drives to computers (Macs or other) is still a task that requires some effort.
What I can give him credit for is the intention to do the right thing. When I mentioned online backup, his face went a little blank. When I mentioned that we could have had his Mac backed up in minutes via something like Carbonite, his face still remains blank. The external drive was practical, he could touch/feel it, paid about $400 for it so it was a high value purchase. It still can. Simply needs to be connected. Mac certainly makes it easy for you, much easier than what is available generally for PC users.
I would say that John is very typical of his industry, focused on the business, loves tools and gadgets but when it comes to doing the right thing in terms of backup, he has other priorities.
Don’t we all.
Article was taken from the Carbonite.com blog. I thought it would be handy for our Australian and New Zealand customers to also see it. It was prepared by the CEO of Carbonite, Dave Friend.
There has been a lot of buzz the past few days about the where the online backup industry is headed and whether unlimited backup is a sustainable business model. Recent news has caused some media to speculate that it’s the beginning of the end for this model which Carbonite introduced almost five years ago.
For us, the answer is simple. We started this company based on the idea that if you keep it simple and affordable, everyone will backup online. So Carbonite will continue to provide consumers with unlimited backup for a flat fee because of the simplicity it provides.
Truth be told, we do lose money on customers with large amounts of data. Our purpose is not to provide the cheapest backup solution to users with unusually large needs, but rather to keep things simple for the vast majority of people. This simplicity is what has fueled our growth: we were the 9th fastest-growing private company in the U.S. last year (#9 on the 2010 Inc. 500, #1 in technology).
To keep the experience compelling and affordable for most people, we do take some measures to allocate bandwidth fairly among our users. These are similar to what Netflix does with its DVD business and are outlined in our bandwidth allocation policy. The vast majority of our customers are not affected by this policy in any way.
I also want to point out something that is sometimes overlooked when Carbonite’s online backup service is discussed in the press and blogs. Over the last year we’ve made our service even more useful to our customers day-to-day, not just when disaster strikes. Today Carbonite users have access to their backed up files “anytime, anywhere” from any internet-connected device thanks to our free web access and mobile applications which now support every major platform (iPhone, Android, Blackberry and soon the iPad.)
In addition to “anytime, anywhere access”, we have several exciting product developments in the works for 2011 that will make the Carbonite experience more powerful, comprehensive and accessible for all types of users (home and business). And we remain committed to making backup simple and affordable. For our home and family users that means unlimited backup for a flat fee.
Last week one of Carbonite biggest competitors in Mozy decided to scrap their unlimited data option. As you would expect in today’s digital world, the change has since caused considerable stir and comment within the ‘blogosphere’.
This post isn’t about analysing what will or won’t happen to their client base. The reality is that Mozy had too many customers with too much data paying far too little based on the product’s expected ROI. The change to kick in in March has disappointed lots and lots of customers, which will no doubt bring some of them to Carbonite (who has stated that they are sticking with an Unlimited offer) and to the various other unlimited offers available in the marketplace.
In some of the press I have read, Mozy has stated that when they launched the service x years ago, people on average only had ‘so much data’, today we have tons more and so the demand to back it all up for about US$60 pa is not sustainable. This all sounds very logical to me and is all very true.
When you read the how Carbonite came about, the founder’s daughter had a PC crash just before having to submit a major university assignment and lost it all. There came the idea to develop a service that was geared to the everyday PC user, that didn’t require a degree in IT to manage and navigate but that offered to same security around data backup that many larger organisations where experiencing. It would be affordable to the everyday person and one flat price per computer.
So the ideal customer for Carbonite in this instance wasn’t the person with a terror-byte of data. We have plenty of them, but this was not the target market. On average a Carbonite user (this data is about 18 months old) has about 35GB. I would say that this has probably increased a little since I was last handed the stat but probably not much. Carbonite has continued to focus on this type of customer by designing the product and its features around it.
- You can only backup 1 PC at a time.
- Video files are not a priority for backup, particularly during the trial phase, they need to be manually selected.
- No backup for external drives.
- Introduction of throttling upload speeds during the initial backup (not restore)
All of these measures have enabled Carbonite to attract its target customer, who will not only remain satisfied with the service but will also be profitable. Overall, Carbonite is a much simpler service than many of the others. Simpler to use and with less features so that you don’t get lost. This means that many in the IT world will probably find it not as feature rich as they would like. Rightly so, Carbonite has steered away from launching too many features and over complicating the service. Even though it knows that more features would probably attract more customers. But are they the right customers?.
Some of the comments I read in the ‘blogosphere’ where that Mozy will do an about face after losing many customers, other said that the rest of the players in the unlimited market will follow them. I personally can’t see Mozy changing its mind.
Carbonite through Twitter has come out saying that they are committed to unlimited backup. I certainly think that the measures they have put in place should enable them to keep this for a long time coming. Certainly it also opens up opportunities to also launch premium offers for those who don’t want the restrictions and are willing to pay a little more for the privilege. With a client base of over one million, Carbonite certainly has scale and that should also provide customers with security that they can sustain their pricing and offer.
In my almost three (3) years of following the online backup world and its many players, one thing I had learned is that customers tend to try a few online backup providers before they settle on one, particularly those that are technology literate. Once they find one, they swear by them so to speak. However, how long you stick around for when someone increases their prices depends on how much the price increase is and how much you love the service.
Certainly interesting times in the world of online backup.
The natural disasters that have been occurring around Australia have raised some serious discussion about what our small businesses are doing regarding backing up their business information. In last week’s post I wrote about the types of data that these small businesses are likely to have. This week I thought I would give some comments on a few articles on the topic that I have seen circulating in the press.
Only one of these articles has been written as a result of the natural disasters we have been experiencing this month. Small businesses all over the world are focusing on surviving the GFC rather than their backup. And rightly so. That is why you need a backup plan in place so that you can concentrate on what makes sense to and what is important for your business’ future, you customers, your service levels, your cashflow.
A backup plan can simply consist of using an external hard drive that you store your key accounting files on. You can run your backup daily or weekly and then keep the drive offsite, eg at the bosses home. Tools like MYOB make this relatively easy. Your key files would also be backed up by an online backup application like Carbonite that would take an automated backup of your key files for you. Between these two simple solutions, you have a very simple backup plan, that works.
Today I have three articles for you. The first (Australian Anthill) relates the change in times and how important data has always been for businesses even when computers where someone’s pipe dream. This article was actually prepared by a competitor of ours, but it is relevant and we support Australian backup providers.
Google’s recently released Top Business Searches of 2010 are remarkable for what they don’t include. While searches such as ‘starting a business’ and ‘make money’ top the list and point to a growing small business sector, what is most alarming is a term that didn’t make the list – backup.
Possibly the least sexy aspect of running your own business, backup and data security are nonetheless fundamental to the operation of any enterprise. Think about it: what would happen if you lost all your files and contacts? Catastrophe, for sure – but this won’t ever happen to you, right?….
Google’s top ten lists might point to an exciting trend in the growth of small businesses, but they also highlight a need for business owners to re-examine their data security protocols. Grab all of it here
The second article was published just this week by SmartCompany and relates to Australian businesses lagging European businesses in their confidence that their backup is secure. I would like to know exactly how many business owners know how much data they have and where it was kept. This lack of confidence for Australia small businesses comes from a fear of the IT world and by placing services such as backup in the too hard basket. It also comes from traditional offsite backup services costing thousands a year rather than hundreds and not being accessible for so long.
Australian businesses are lagging European nations when it comes to critical data recovery services, and the recent floods in Queensland only prove how important critical backups can be when disaster strikes, new research has found.
A new global report commissioned by IT firm Acronis found Australian businesses are among the least confident in the world when it comes to their business’s ability to recovery from a disaster, with Germany and the Netherlands leading the pack.
The survey focused on SMEs with up to 500 employees. Over 3,000 businesses were questioned worldwide, and 259 of those were located in Australia.
In Australia, only 44% of businesses said they were confident in their ability to avoid downtime in the event of a serious incident. Only 36% said they had confidence in recovering quickly, which is well below the 77% and 85% figures recorded in the Netherlands. You can access the rest of the story here.
The final article (via ITNews) is about data recovery and establishing plans that staff can follow. Does your business have a plan that is rehearsed the same way you rehearse a fire drill? Most businesses who outsource their IT will rely upon their external IT person to restore their backup for them. However in the case of a disaster how many people can this IT person deal with in a day. Your business needs to know what to do and you should have a plan that clearly states what the steps are. Your IT consultant should be helping you put this plan together and explaining to you what each step means.
But four-fifths of Australia’s IT workers are not so confident they could reboot after catastrophe.
When flood waters threatened to breach the banks of the Brisbane River last Wednesday, the State Library of Queensland looked to be one of its first casualties.
Fortunately for the library and Queensland’s bookworms, management had a well-developed disaster recovery plan that went beyond simple data backup and that included all the minutiae of surviving catastrophe so that librarians didn’t have to make it up as they went along. You can access the rest of the article here.
It has a been a very busy week in backup news and rightly so. Many Australian businesses are in a for a rude awakening when they start looking for the records to get their businesses up and running again.
This week Australia has unfortunately seen the worst of what nature can dish out. Sometimes there is no preparation that you can put in place that will prevent freak events. You just have to lucky enough to survive them, and for many it is just luck. Luck that your home or workplace is located on x street in x suburb.
And it wasn’t just Qld that suffered this week, WA had bush fires and even NSW and Victoria experienced some minor flooding. In last week’s post I wrote about what to do to prevent your PC from dying after it has been affected by water. At the time of writing it, I wandered how relevant it would be if the water damage never went near the height of the desk. How wrong I was. The other issue is clean water is quite different to muddy water. I might need to revise it and see if I can find something on this.
The Age also prepared an interesting article on the Digital Armageddon. For many people it will be just that. Hopefully local PC businesses will be able to assist them so that hard drives can be saved. Whilst I understand losing pictures can be very painful, I do feel more for the small businesses that will have lost their data.
Most people don’t realise just how much we rely upon data these days. Even a small local bakery has data to worry about:
- Debtors - it might deliver bread to local restaurants and cafes and keep a log on their home or work PC of what deliveries have been made to which businesses and what has been paid for and what is owed so far. All this would be lost. It could cost them thousands if they can’t remember what was paid and owed to them.
- Creditors – they may have local accounts with mills and other suppliers of ingredients for the breads and pies and other baking goods they produce. They know what they have paid to date (or did) and what is owed and the terms they are on, particularly the pricing structures they have been able to negotiate to date. How do they start again?
- Tabs – local accounts. A common practice for many small businesses is to keep accounts for regular customers. Little book kept under the counter of what you last purchased and paid for. It is all data, whether it is kept on the PC or not.
- Tax Records – your receipts and other records for the past quarter or the last time you did your BAS. Now it would be likely that the accountant would have the history (and hopefully they have backed it up offsite). What if they did their own taxes and BAS statements? I suppose the ATO is going to provide some leniency here so this might be manageable. What about if they decide that they have had enough and it is time to sell up, move on to something else, somewhere else? Are the records needed then?
- Fittings/Stock – insurance and what is covered/isn’t has been mentioned a few times already this week. If they are covered and can claim, do any of them have records of what they had in their stores. Stock that is insured, fittings, furniture, computers, and everything else that makes a business work. Do businesses keep up to date records of these things?
- Payroll – who worked when and who has and hasn’t been paid? If they aren’t kept in a PC at home or in some book in the office. All gone and has to be recalculated. People will be asking for their money at some stage.
Someone asked me today if we had seen any increase in business as a result of the events of this week. To be honest I am not sure. I would say that backup will be something that these small businesses will be thinking about when their old hardware is being replaced. Those selling them the PCs will be telling them to back it up. And so they should. Let’s hope it isn’t just an external hard drive that will be kept with the PC.
I man there is nothing wrong with visiting your local Discksmith or Harvey Norman to get your gear, but if all they can recommend in terms of backup is an external drive (because that is all they sell) then we haven’t learn’t much this week in terms of the importance of offsite backups.
So who cares about data anyway? “I don’t have a business to run anymore and you are telling me that I should be worried about my lost books”
