The Other SaaS: Online Backup Comes Of Age

"We've let go of clients," she said. "We told them, 'This is what you need to do.' If they say no, we say, 'Bye-bye.' One was a $3 billion company."

Guardian Angel offers two online storage service options to customers. The first, AngelSafe Offsite, is based on eFolder technology. It lets customers send data off-site to a secure facility, and keep a copy of the backups locally for fast restores. The second, AngelSafe BDR, uses the online storage capabilities and the local storage appliance from Zenith Infotech, Mumbai, India, and Warrendale, Pa. That appliance has the ability to automatically build and host a virtual server in case a physical server goes down.

Alvarez Technology Group, a Salinas, Calif.-based MSP, leverages its managed services to get small businesses to sign up for online storage, said Luis Alvarez, president and CEO.

Existing customers who add online backup get it at a 25 percent discount, a discount the MSP can offer because of its healthy markup on the backup service, Alvarez said.

Alvarez Technology has signed up about 30 clients in the past 12 months to its iSave service, which is its branded version of the eFolder service. Those clients range in size from five or fewer desktop PCs to up to 50 PCs, Alvarez said.

The MSP also passes customers looking for a simple, low-cost backup-and-restore service to companies like Boston-based Carbonite Inc. Alvarez said he's always evaluating other online backup services, such as the Symantec Protection Network from Symantec, Cupertino, Calif. "We're looking at them because of their brand name, and their introductory price is in line with eFolder's," he said.

Truistic Solutions, a nine-employee Houston-based managed IT service provider, got involved with online storage because customers, most of whom have 25 to 75 employees, began to realize just how important it was to their businesses, said Mike Daniel, vice president and COO.

"They all want to get away from tape," Daniel said. "After the big hurricanes almost three years ago, everyone decided they need to be prepared, so our business took off."

Truistic works with another hosted storage provider, Houston-based Terian Solutions LLC, but provides the service to customers under its own TruCare brand. "If we need to change providers, we don't have to worry about the name," Daniel said. "We may sometimes have to offer a different solution, based on customer needs."

Vendor Landscape

A growing number of vendors offer online backup, recovery, archiving and protection services. They can generally be divided into several categories.

The first are smaller companies that only offer technology to let others build a storage as a service business, or have that feature as part of their data protection software.

Examples of the first type include eFolder; Vembu Technologies Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India; and Zenith Infotech Ltd., Mumbai, India and Warrendale, Pa. These companies, in general, are nearly unanimous in their belief that MSPs and other solution providers are the best, if not the only, way for them to reach potential clients.

The latter include companies such as CommVault Systems, Oceanport, N.J.; Robo DRS, Atlanta; and NovaStor, Simi Valley, Calif. They are either completely, or mainly, channel-focused.

Next: Tier-one storage vendors get into the act