Lenovo to Offer EMC Backup Service With Select ThinkPads update from September 2008

Lenovo on Wednesday said is offering EMC (NYSE: EMC)'s Mozy online backup service on new ThinkPad SL series notebooks.

The Mozy service, which will offer unlimited backup capacity, will be targeted at small businesses. The service offers data encryption and the ability to schedule backups at anytime.

The operation typically runs in the background without disturbing other programs or workflow. Users can set the amount of bandwidth used by the service.

Depending on the upload speed, which is usually far slower than download speeds, backup can take quite awhile, particular when the service is used for the first time. Depending on the amount of data, the initial backup can take a couple of days or more on a home high-speed connection.

Lenovo is offering the Mozy service on ThinkPad SL series notebooks sold in Ireland, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, United States and Canada. The computer maker plans to eventually offer the service worldwide on all ThinkPad-branded systems. The service will be available in seven languages.ThinkPad SL buyers can try out the service for 90 days at no charge, with a maximum of 5 GB of storage. Pricing for the service starts at $49.

Mozy has 850,000 subscribers and 23,000 business customers, according to EMC. On Wednesday, the storage vendor said it has opened Mozy's first international data center. Located in Dublin, Ireland, the center is expected to address certain government regulations pertaining to electronic data storage and encryption export restrictions.

EMC in July dropped the price for server backups via MozyPro to 50 cents per gigabyte per month from $1.75 per GB. The reduction brought the price down to where it was before a February price hike.

Antone Gonsalves, InformationWeek