Cloud Backup — Guiding SMBs Through Seeding

By Brian Findlay, director, Global Storage, Imation Scalable Storage

Many managed service providers (MSPs) and VARs have been inundated with questions from SMB clients regarding methods to back up critical company data, particularly now, given increasing data storage demands resulting from an influx of new content types such as digital media. With availability of new turnkey storage solutions from technology partners, MSPs can deploy costeffective, multi-tiered backup for clients by utilizing on-site, off-site, and cloud backup methods.

Among these backup methods, cloud backup, commonly referred to as online backup, is becoming increasingly attractive to SMBs. In fact, a Spiceworks Voice of IT market research report published in November 2010 stated that nearly 60% of SMBs interviewed believe cloud computing will be important to their organization’s storage infrastructure plans. Online backup provides a foray into the cloud, yielding cost savings while optimizing data protection.

However, in order for MSPs to leverage online backup through cloud storage, they must execute a better process than traditional electronic data transfer to initially “seed” the cloud.