Several announcements planned for this week highlight a spurt of growth in outsourced data storage services, such as online backup and disaster recovery for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
Today, for instance, Unitrends Corp. has added remote vaulting, in the form of integral CD burners and software, to its business continuity appliances. The vendor is touting three integrators who are using it as the basis for services to SMBs. (See Unitrends Adds Capabilities .)
One of the integrators, Michigan ISP Trivalent Group, anticipates that new online backup services based on the Unitrends disk-to-disk appliances will eventually account for a quarter of its annual revenues, which include systems integration as well as Internet services. Michael Noordyke, CEO of Trivalent, says local customers are attracted by the prospect of having hardware and software, vaulting, and bandwidth all from one supplier.
Noordyke's team started planning the service over 18 months ago. They saw that local companies were conservative enough to want data protection, but couldn't always afford to put it together in house. For many firms, paying about $1,000 a month to have someone take it off their hands is still cheaper than going it alone.
Trivalent starts at about $600. "We go in, size the amount of servers and data they want to protect, and then the DPU [Unitrends' Data Protection Unit] goes in," Noordyke says. "For x amount of data, we charge x amount per month."
