Online Data Backup has been around for about 10 years; however its growth was limited by the lack of
high-speed internet access and concerns about security and privacy. Over the
last few years DSL and Cable internet has become widely available. Online Backup became a realistic option for individuals and companies as a way of
having full business continuity. Gartner
Group... % of business fail because of data disaster quote..
We have researched many companies and finally selecting what I considered are the 6 best companies in the small to medium sized enterprises (SME) market.
Although they all vary in different elements such as price, software, features, reliability and speed, I found two main problems that are common to all of them. One is price. Currently prices average around $10/GB per month for companies specializing in the SME market, although prices are significantly higher for enterprises and large businesses. This pricing model is probably acceptable for temporary data sharing and for users with limited data size. However, it is not realistic for companies with Terabytes of data or individuals who have accumulated tens of GB of digital photos or videos. This problem will only get worse as time goes by, as people accumulate more and more data.
I believe that pricing will have to go down to $10/month for 100 GB of data storage to attract the masses.
The second problem is speed. Among the six companies selected for detailed research, the average upload speed was about 1 MB/minute, which means if you have 10 GB of files, it could take you 5-6 days to backup. Mind you most of the heavy lifting is done at the beginning, and later backups are smaller, as only the changes are uploaded. This problem is not caused by slow connection on the user end, but rather by the congestion on the provider side. To have mass adoption of this service, providers would have to increase speed to the point where users can upload 10 GB backup data in a few hours. The good news is that download (or restoration) speed is much faster (often 5-10 times faster).
On the positive side, I found that most of the companies have software which is largely bug free, and quite intuitive to use. A number of them include a wizard feature that will take you through the process of backup and restore step by step.
