Online Backup Providers Add Mac Support

EMC signaled its intentions to break into the consumer space today with an enhanced version of its Mozy online backup software, which can now handle data from both Windows and Mac devices.

Previously, Mozy was just for Windows data,” says Vance Checketts, COO at Mozy, which EMC bought for $76 million last year. “Now it’s also for Mac, starting with the consumer, and moving soon to a business version.”

The exec added that the consumer market for Mac-based online backup is massive, as evidenced by the fact that there have been 43,000 beta downloads of the MozyHome for Mac product.

Mozy is touting its Mac offering as an alternative to local backup devices from the likes of Maxtor of LaCie, pushing online backup as a way for users to protect data from natural disasters and even theft.

MozyHome for Mac, which is available now, costs $4.95 per month for unlimited storage capacity, although Checketts told Byte and Switch that Mac-based versions of the higher-end MozyPro and MozyEnterprise offerings will be launched in the summer.Unlike MozyHome, both MozyPro and MozyEnterprise offer the ability to control multiple devices through a single Web-based dashboard. MozyEnterprise for Mac will also contain additional automation features and the ability to support servers, according to Checketts.

”The big play for businesses will be that they can reach a much larger percentage of their population, rather than just Windows-based offerings,” he says.

Mozy arch-rival Carbonite is also moving into this space and will launch a Mac-based version of its own PCBackup software in a couple of months.

”It’s going into beta this month, and it’s scheduled for release in July,” says David Friend, the Carbonite CEO, adding that the vendor has had to throw significant resources at building a user interface that would please the Mac community.

Carbonite even had to pull the first version of its Mac offering when it went into beta last fall, according to the exec.“We have spent about a year redoing the whole thing,” he says. “[The user interface] was too PC-like, it looked too much like a Windows company porting their product to be a Mac product.”

After hiring a California-based design team with extensive Apple expertise, Carbonite believes that it has solved these issues. “We’re hoping that it’s going to be well received,” says Friend. Carbonite’s initial backup offering, like Mozy’s will be consumer-focused, he added, with an enterprise version scheduled for later this year.

Clearly, EMC is also throwing resources at Mozy, which now forms a key part of the vendor’s cloud strategy for online storage services.

“We’re probably the most visible part of the whole cloud strategy now,” admits Checketts, adding that more announcements will be forthcoming from EMC CEO Joe Tucci and Paul Maritz, who joined the company from its acquisition of Pi Corp. earlier this year.

Former Pi CEO Maritz is now president and GM of EMC’s new Cloud Infrastructure and Services Division, which includes the vendor’s Fortress SaaS platform and Mozy.Have a comment on this story? Please click "Discuss" below. If you'd like to contact Byte and Switch's editors directly, send us a message.