Carbonite, of Boston, works with about 700 small solution providers to bring a simple, low-cost online backup service to small businesses and schools, said CEO David Friend. The typical customer is one that wants to replace its tape-based backup technology for something less complicated, Friend said.
"Backups can be expensive, but here's a service for $5 per month for unlimited storage capacity," he said.
Partners range in size from small mom-and-pop resellers larger companies such as Circuit City through that company's FireDog service, Friend said. The majority of business is still done direct, but indirect sales are growing faster. Carbonite has a dedicated channel manager, he said.
The company in the last month or so introduced several new features to its service to make it more suitable for business customers, Friend said. They include advanced scheduling to set specific times when bandwidth usage is low to do the online backups, the ability for customers to manage their own encryption keys, the ability to go back to previous versions of data created up to 90 days in the past, the ability to include or exclude specific file types such as .MP3 files, and an API to let solution providers provision and charge for storage as part of a service for their customers.
Later this year, Carbonite plans to come out with a Pro version of its service. Both small businesses and home users currently use the same service, but there are many features home users do not require, Friend said. "We will split the consumer and professional versions apart, while offering more administrative features including centralized management of multiple customers, for business users," he said.
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