EXPRESS TELEPHONY LAUNCH ONLINE DATA BACKUP SOLUTION

For many years Internet Service Providers (ISP's) have offered the ability for SMEs to back-up their data over broadband to a central storage facility but only recently has this really taken off. So what’s changed? Andrew Dickinson, Sales and Marketing Director at Griffin Internet one of our Broadband wholesale partners, investigates Online Backup and the potential benefits to resellers and their customers.

Express Telephony in conjunction with Griffin Information Systems will supply their ExpressBackup product to anyone needing a reliable backup solution. This will provide a fully resilent off site supported backup solution that conforms to all disaster recovery regulations and for a little over £7.00 per month for up to 25gb of data it's great value and offers peace of mind in event your systems crash and you need your data in a hurry!

Andrew Dickinson Wrote Recently; 

Ever over-written a document by mistake because you forgot to save with a different name; worked all night on a presentation only to find the file corrupt as you stand up to speak; lost a laptop or had critical files deleted by mistake? The traditional protection against data loss was to make a daily copy of data and store it off-site or in a fireproof safe. However the need for real-time, hassle free back-up and guaranteed instant restoration has made this approach virtually redundant.

Online back-up has been around for years but it has been too difficult for the end user to install and use, too expensive to go mass market but not expensive enough for resellers to justify putting a lot of resource behind it. Most importantly resellers have had to sell it whereas what they need is for their customers to buy it – preferably ‘off-the-page’.

Generic advertising by multinationals like BT has helped encourage the ‘pull’ demand from SMEs and some of the better ISPs have developed products designed to be sold through the channel. The best of these work in any environment, need no specialist hardware or complicated set-up routine and operate in the background without the user having to do anything. The end user should be able to easily restore individual documents or entire files without having to have in-house IT expertise or needing to call their service provider.

As we approach broadband saturation in the UK SME market, run-rate has slowed, margins have shrunk and competition is fierce with suppliers trying to steal customers from each other. 

So what should you be looking for in selecting your supplier of online backup?

• The right price; For just £7.00 per month it has to be pitched at a competitive price that is affordable.
• Financially and technically secure. If you are going to trust your data to a third party they need to be offering 100% reliability and have a strong balance sheet.
• It needs to be easy to buy set-up and manage.
• SOURCE: Andrew Dickinson - Griffin information Systems Limited & Comms Dealer July 2009

For more information on the best backup solution for your data contact This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it