Which Backup Solution to Recommend/Sell?

Log in to reply
northlondonitsupport

northlondonitsupport

Free Member
May 25, 2010
69
9
London
  • #1
    Hi Everyone

    I am hoping one of you IT companies may be able to give me a bit of advice on which backup solution you sell on to your customers?

    My customers are typically home users or very small businesses. Many don't have any backup solution and are terrified of the prospect of losing all their data (from business data through to pictures and personal stuff). I usually set them up quite easily with a solution for an external drive, but some would like on-line "cloud" backups for the obvious reasons - theft/fire etc....

    What do you sell onto your clients and is the a good affiliate system/residual income from any which is good value for the clients and makes you a little bit of extra income?

    Thanks for your thoughts in advance.
     
    D

    Dongleme IT Consultancy

  • #6
    Have you tried Macrium Reflect? I have found it very useful for a number of my small business clients. Easy to use and restore if anything goes wrong. You can get a free trial too. Might be worth a try?

    All the best!
     
    Upvote 0
    D

    Dawn Lane

  • #7
    I use and recommend IDrive - it will back up your pc/laptop/networked hard drives and any external hard drives also connected to your system.

    It is online and can be used from any internet connection to restore or even just download a file when away from your desk.

    https://www.idrive.com/?p=your_office_online try the link - 2gb of storage for free and upto 150Gb for $4.99US per month. Have used it for two years or more now with no problems at all.

    Dawn
     
    Upvote 0
    DataSafeServices

    DataSafeServices

    Free Member
    Nov 10, 2010
    5
    1
    London
  • #12
    Small businesses often prefer to outsource the backup to a remote backup company. It's less hassle for them and it means that their data backup is being checked/looked after by experts.

    Backup service providers like us usually give commission to referrers. In our case it's 20% of customer revenue for as long as the customer is with both us and the referrer.
     
    Upvote 0
    L

    leemason

  • #13
    A couple of people have kindly mentioned our BackupsAnywhere online backup services. We resell these via a network of resellers and can even provide you with branded services if required. If you want some more information please drop me a PM.

    Thanks,

    Lee
     
    Upvote 0
    S

    safesys

  • #16
    We also offer an online backup service for 50p per gigabyte per month.

    This includes full monitoring, integrity checks, 256 bit encryption of data on the backup servers so it is secure, System State, SQL & Exchange server hot backups, brick level mailbox backups (if required) and standard data backups too.

    I wouldn't recommend mozy as although the backup procedure is relatively painless, restoration can be a nightmare if you've got a lot of data as they tend to want to send it to you on a DVD rather than by download.

    If anyone wants more info, drop me a pm.
     
    Upvote 0
    L

    leemason

  • #17
    safenet said:
    I wouldn't recommend mozy as although the backup procedure is relatively painless, restoration can be a nightmare if you've got a lot of data as they tend to want to send it to you on a DVD rather than by download.
    Click to expand...

    I also understand that Mozy tend to limit backup bandwidth so even though they offer larger amounts of data storage it can be difficult to make use of. This is the same with many providers who offer "unlimited" storage (read the fair usage policy though as they may still cap your storage if you use too much of the "unlimited" storage). It's easy to offer unlimited storage and then cap the upload bandwidth at 256Kb (or lower) to stop users from making full use of it.

    There is so much mis-selling in the IT marketplace in areas like this (and broadband for example) that it's difficult for companies to know what they are really buying.
     
    Upvote 0
    JoeDohn

    JoeDohn

    Free Member
    Aug 18, 2010
    7
    2
    London
  • #19
    I don't know how this online backup became so popular. Definitely a great sales pitch behind it. You have an average upstream of 1/2 - 1 Mb and people are thinking of backing up several GB via that. Seriously!!!
    The common practice used to be, backing up to an external option and moving it off-site. External was/is anything from tape to portable drive USB/Firewire/NAS. This is still the best way to do it ... with a few notes.
    Windows Backup compression is ... a joke. Of the so many soft packs out there my favourite are Acronis or Ghost. Used both until Acronis became the favourite for more reasons .... Maybe just a personal opinion ... but I find it less of a resource hog than the other, and when not using I can stop the services related to it.
    Macrium tried, but it has a very well known issue which they still didn't sort out. once the software is installed, if you try to modify file or folder names on external devices, you will almost always get a BSOD. I would NOT recomend Macrium.
    The "do-it-yourself" backup the home user does is free. If he wants proper backup management than he has the option to either learn how to do it, or pay someone to do it. Not everything in this world has to be free.
    So, my opinion, NLondonITSupport, simply ask them to keep their external drives in a different location from the one they keep their computers on. Unless they are happy to pay you to go on site on regular bases and deal with their backing up and moving them offsite once done.
     
    Upvote 0
    D

    DotNetWebs

  • #20
    JoeDohn said:
    I don't know how this online backup became so popular. Definitely a great sales pitch behind it. You have an average upstream of 1/2 - 1 Mb and people are thinking of backing up several GB via that. Seriously!!!...
    Click to expand...

    I have to admit I was sceptical of this but the way I do it is to have an NAS for 'local' backup and use SafeSync for long-term, off-site backup.

    The initial upload took a few days but the SafeSync Client, running on a local server, happily ran in the background syncing the NAS with it's servers.

    Once the initial upload was complete subseqent backups take place quickly and seamlessly in the background.

    We now have around 50GB online that mirrors our NAS without any further intervention - I hardly even think about it any more!

    Regards

    Dotty
     
    Upvote 0
    L

    leemason

  • #21
    JoeDohn said:
    I don't know how this online backup became so popular. Definitely a great sales pitch behind it. You have an average upstream of 1/2 - 1 Mb and people are thinking of backing up several GB via that. Seriously!!!
    The common practice used to be, backing up to an external option and moving it off-site. External was/is anything from tape to portable drive USB/Firewire/NAS. This is still the best way to do it ... with a few notes.
    Windows Backup compression is ... a joke. Of the so many soft packs out there my favourite are Acronis or Ghost. Used both until Acronis became the favourite for more reasons .... Maybe just a personal opinion ... but I find it less of a resource hog than the other, and when not using I can stop the services related to it.
    Macrium tried, but it has a very well known issue which they still didn't sort out. once the software is installed, if you try to modify file or folder names on external devices, you will almost always get a BSOD. I would NOT recomend Macrium.
    The "do-it-yourself" backup the home user does is free. If he wants proper backup management than he has the option to either learn how to do it, or pay someone to do it. Not everything in this world has to be free.
    So, my opinion, NLondonITSupport, simply ask them to keep their external drives in a different location from the one they keep their computers on. Unless they are happy to pay you to go on site on regular bases and deal with their backing up and moving them offsite once done.
    Click to expand...

    On ADSL the upstream speed is relatively slow (at between about 500Kb and 768Kb). However with compression (and ours tends to do about 2:1 compression for most types of data) this gets to about 1Mb to 1.5Mb. The initial backup of several tens of gigabytes can be slow. However after that it's pretty quick because we also use in-file delta technology to only backup data within files that has changed. So if you have a 1GB outlook.pst file but only update about 5% of that a day you backup about 50MB per day which is easily manageable across ADSL.

    Backing up to external hard drives and rotating them offsite is great if you have the discipline and motivation to do it. Most people I know haven't got that. Online backup needs that you just set it and every night you have a backup solution with built in DR.
     
    Upvote 0
    JoeDohn

    JoeDohn

    Free Member
    Aug 18, 2010
    7
    2
    London
  • #22
    DotNetWebs said:
    I have to admit I was sceptical of this but the way I do it is to have an NAS for 'local' backup and use SafeSync for long-term, off-site backup.

    The initial upload took a few days but the SafeSync Client, running on a local server, happily ran in the background syncing the NAS with it's servers.

    Once the initial upload was complete subseqent backups take place quickly and seamlessly in the background.

    We now have around 50GB online that mirrors our NAS without any further intervention - I hardly even think about it any more!

    Regards

    Dotty
    Click to expand...

    Try convincing a home user and very small business adopting this method though :) ... on their budget.
     
    Upvote 0
    L

    leemason

  • #23
    JoeDohn said:
    Try convincing a home user and very small business adopting this method though :) ... on their budget.
    Click to expand...

    I have several small businesses that I serve. Mainly after they've had a disaster and learned the hard way. I agree that it's difficult to convince small businesses to send the money unless they've seen the evidence personally that it's something they really need.
     
    Upvote 0
    JoeDohn

    JoeDohn

    Free Member
    Aug 18, 2010
    7
    2
    London
  • #24
    leemason said:
    On ADSL the upstream speed is relatively slow (at between about 500Kb and 768Kb). However with compression (and ours tends to do about 2:1 compression for most types of data) this gets to about 1Mb to 1.5Mb. The initial backup of several tens of gigabytes can be slow. However after that it's pretty quick because we also use in-file delta technology to only backup data within files that has changed. So if you have a 1GB outlook.pst file but only update about 5% of that a day you backup about 50MB per day which is easily manageable across ADSL.
    .
    Click to expand...

    This is technically very interesting and I would personally adopt it for my own use if I was too lazy to deal with my own backups. It might be proprietary so ... not sure you would answer, how does in-file delta tech deal with EFS, protected .pst, or domain protected data ... as far as looking inside the file is concerned. Will it end up needing to backup the enitire file, or the user would have to provide the credentials/certificates in order to allow the backup program to look in it?
     
    Upvote 0
    L

    leemason

  • #25
    JoeDohn said:
    This is technically very interesting and I would personally adopt it for my own use if I was too lazy to deal with my own backups. It might be proprietary so ... not sure you would answer, how does in-file delta tech deal with EFS, protected .pst, or domain protected data ... as far as looking inside the file is concerned. Will it end up needing to backup the enitire file, or the user would have to provide the credentials/certificates in order to allow the backup program to look in it?
    Click to expand...

    Like any software the backup client would need at least read access to the files to be backed up. Windows domain logon credentials would need to be supplied to the backup client in order to allow it to logon to a domain account which has access to any files to be backed up.
     
    • Like
    Reactions: JoeDohn
    Upvote 0
    L

    leemason

  • #26
    JoeDohn said:
    This is technically very interesting and I would personally adopt it for my own use if I was too lazy to deal with my own backups. It might be proprietary so ... not sure you would answer, how does in-file delta tech deal with EFS, protected .pst, or domain protected data ... as far as looking inside the file is concerned. Will it end up needing to backup the enitire file, or the user would have to provide the credentials/certificates in order to allow the backup program to look in it?
    Click to expand...

    By the way, I doubt that many of my customers would class themselves as lazy. They just want to get on running their businesses, not their backups. I have a wide variety of customers in many different market sectors many of who might be seen as very active Entrepreneurs who run many businesses. These people would work 24 hours a day if they could so not so lazy.
     
    Upvote 0
    J

    JohnGeek

  • #28
    northlondonitsupport said:
    Hi Everyone

    I am hoping one of you IT companies may be able to give me a bit of advice on which backup solution you sell on to your customers?

    My customers are typically home users or very small businesses. Many don't have any backup solution and are terrified of the prospect of losing all their data (from business data through to pictures and personal stuff). I usually set them up quite easily with a solution for an external drive, but some would like on-line "cloud" backups for the obvious reasons - theft/fire etc....

    What do you sell onto your clients and is the a good affiliate system/residual income from any which is good value for the clients and makes you a little bit of extra income?

    Thanks for your thoughts in advance.
    Click to expand...

    I recommend Handy Backup (handybackup.net) by Novosoft, they provide both backp software and online backup solution. It has right price, right features, and is easy to use.
     
    Upvote 0
    Log in to reply

    Latest Articles

    Top Bottom
    Community
    Articles
    Menu