EMC (NYSE: EMC) has boosted the performance of its Mozy online backup service and added support for local disk backup.
EMC is calling the updates version 2.0 of the online backup service it acquired in 2007. MozyHome 2.0 and MozyPro 2.0 get faster upload speeds and lower bandwidth usage, interface and setup improvements and Mozy 2xProtect, a new feature that allows Mozy users to back up to a local external drive in addition to Mozy’s online data centers.
Mozy boasts more than a million consumer users and 50,000 businesses, up 250 percent in the 2 1/2 years EMC has owned the service. The service now protects about 30 petabytes of data.
Even before EMC acquired Mozy, the service had signed up GE as a customer, and Dave Robinson, Mozy’s vice president of marketing, said more and more large corporations are using the service.
“It’s definitely a trend that we’re seeing, these larger businesses turning toward the cloud,” Robinson told Enterprise Storage Forum.
Mozy also boasts partnerships with Cox Business, Comcast, McAfee, ChinaTelecom and Clearlybusiness, a subsidiary of Barclays Bank.
Robinson sees a bright future for the service as data becomes more mobile and must be accessed from anywhere, and backing up smartphone users’ photos, financial documents and contacts is a possible market too.
“It’s still very early for a cloud-based backup solution, so we see plenty of growth,” he said.
Mozy 2.0 promises 25 percent faster backups, largely achieved through a more efficient coding process, and Mozy 2xProtect automatically backs up files to an external drive in addition to a Mozy data center so users can have both local and remote copies of their data.
MozyHome 2.0 and MozyPro 2.0 are available immediately for Microsoft Windows, with a Mac version planned for later this year.
MozyHome offers consumers 2 GB of free storage and unlimited storage for $4.95 a month per computer. MozyPro offers a Web-based administrative console to manage backups, server support and phone support starting at $4.95 per month.
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