EFolder Protects, Ensures Data Remotely

Company:

Headquarters: Atlanta, Ga.

Technology Sector: Storage

Key Product: EFolder Backup

Year Founded: 2001

Number of Channel Partners: Over 400 in North America

Ideal Channel Partner: Managed Service Providers

Why You Should Care: EFolder provides reliable online backup that protects data integrity for customers while creating reoccurring revenue for solution providers without too many messy entanglements on a day-to-day basis.

The Lowdown: Providing data backup doesn't just provide an archive for customers; in many ways it provides peace of mind as well. The eFolder Backup provides solution providers a chance to protect customer data in the form of a hands-off solution that lets revenue stream in on a monthly basis.

EFolder is an Atlanta, Ga.-based vendor that has the channel in its veins, as the company was formerly known as SafeNet, a solution provider. The company decided it could work with the channel to provide granular backup services with technology specifically developed to be channel-friendly.

"We developed this technology from the ground up," said Kevin Hoffman, CTO of eFolder. "When a solution provider partners with us, one advantage they get is in branding. We strip our brand off the product and allow our partners to rebrand as their own before it goes to a customer."

For a solution provider, the branding goes beyond just logos and extends to file names and service names. According to Hoffman, that is part of eFolder's strategy of putting solution providers first.

The eFolder Backup product itself isn't just an online backup offering either, said Hoffman. "We focus on data integrity as well," he said. "We have several proprietary mechanisms that, from the moment data leaves a computer, across the network and until it arrives at the data center, work to maintain the data integrity." Additionally, solution providers can install eFolder Backup on a customer network and then monitor remotely from a Web site that automatically alerts users and VARs to any problems that occur.

"A challenge with some backup products is that a solution provider's profit margin is eaten up if they need to baby sit the log," said Hoffman. "EFolder has built-in self healing logic in the backup client. eFolder only speaks up or puts an error in the log if there is a real problem that needs attention."

As an added bonus, the discount that solution providers receive on the software continues to rise as they add more customers to their account. That means that as eFolder Backup solution providers bring on more clients, the cost of the service to them gets cheaper. "No one has bottomed out on our volume discounts," said Hoffman. "There are two partner levels, gold and platinum. EFolder charges based on monthly storage, and the higher volume partners get additional aggregated discounts. It's an incentive to sell more product."