White label online backup solutions

[suityou01]

Been approached by a firm to resell their online backup solution.
They (the company) seem new to me. Their existing clients section is a bit bare, and their automated emails have spelling mistakes in.

Has anyone successfully resold online backup solutions?

For me the big criteria are

Big backbone of extremely expensive hardware and legions of tulip hot techies
Rebrandable product and online management console.
Automated billing.
Electronic xml type file of all their billing to be munged into my own invoices in two shakes of a lambs tail.
Reasonable price.
No minimum storage level (try telling Joe Plumbers Inc they need to buy 25Gb up front)

When I mentioned the minimum storage thing as being a bit of a bind, the company that approached me said that I could by one lump of 25Gb and resell chunks. Great I thought, until I found out that in order to do this I would need to have each client within their own chunk of the whole using the same password, and in order to keep that a secret, keep it from them.

I mean seriously, some bloke with a Mickey Mouse local IT firm approaches you, says give me all your data and I'll back it up for £10 per month but I can't give you the password.

[CalmEddie]

No encryption?

How does it compare with AWS S3?
http://aws.amazon.com/s3/

[suityou01]

No encryption?

How does it compare with AWS S3?
http://aws.amazon.com/s3/

Er yes, encryption. 256bit AES. Should have mentioned that.

I know about S3. I mentioned this to "the company" and they said they were better because

Repatriation of Data (S3 is Yank side) - he never elaborated to what he meant by repatriation, and sounded like he was reading from a sheet.

Being as the data is Yank side and they are UK based, they could send couriers out with NAS drives in the event of a disaster to courier your data to you.

These were the selling points.

[Cliphead]

S3 servers are available in Europe as well.

[CalmEddie]

they could send couriers out with NAS drives

Novel convenience point, but surely a gaping hole in the physical security?

[NickFitz]

Repatriation of Data (S3 is Yank side) - he never elaborated to what he meant by repatriation, and sounded like he was reading from a sheet.

Being as the data is Yank side and they are UK based, they could send couriers out with NAS drives in the event of a disaster to courier your data to you.

S3 servers are available in Europe as well.

WCHS. They have data centres in Ireland, and you can choose to have your data hosted there.

They also now offer AWS Import/Export: send them a suitable storage device and they'll upload or download your data.

Given that Amazon absolutely have to do this stuff reliably - it's just their spare capacity, and let's face it, they can't afford to lose their database of books and so on - and, what's more, have been doing it for years, developing the technology as they go along, I certainly have a degree of faith in them. (Cue some troll pointing to the fact that they've had about two hours' downtime in the last three years.)

Not to knock the company that's trying to sell you this service - we all need to make a living, and they may have a USP that makes all the difference; but be sure of the USP, rather than accepting a bunch of stuff read off a sheet.

The points you mention don't really sound like anything that Amazon isn't already offering; it's more like they're being made in comparison to what Amazon was offering about six to nine months ago.

Although they aren't quick enough to pick up on what their primary competition is offering, that could just be a failing in the marketing division, so they may still be worth looking at if they can get around the ludicrous password problem and the price is right and they'll still be here in three years.

(Maybe I'm too soft-hearted, but having written this I'm now starting to feel sorry for this unnamed company, trying to compete in a brutal market. Then again, I'm not sure offering such services is a viable business unless you really, really have a USP, in which case they need to improve their marketing. I just hope they're wasting VC money rather than their own.)

[suityou01]

WCHS. They have data centres in Ireland, and you can choose to have your data hosted there.

They also now offer AWS Import/Export: send them a suitable storage device and they'll upload or download your data.

Given that Amazon absolutely have to do this stuff reliably - it's just their spare capacity, and let's face it, they can't afford to lose their database of books and so on - and, what's more, have been doing it for years, developing the technology as they go along, I certainly have a degree of faith in them. (Cue some troll pointing to the fact that they've had about two hours' downtime in the last three years.)

Not to knock the company that's trying to sell you this service - we all need to make a living, and they may have a USP that makes all the difference; but be sure of the USP, rather than accepting a bunch of stuff read off a sheet.

The points you mention don't really sound like anything that Amazon isn't already offering; it's more like they're being made in comparison to what Amazon was offering about six to nine months ago.

Although they aren't quick enough to pick up on what their primary competition is offering, that could just be a failing in the marketing division, so they may still be worth looking at if they can get around the ludicrous password problem and the price is right and they'll still be here in three years.

(Maybe I'm too soft-hearted, but having written this I'm now starting to feel sorry for this unnamed company, trying to compete in a brutal market. Then again, I'm not sure offering such services is a viable business unless you really, really have a USP, in which case they need to improve their marketing. I just hope they're wasting VC money rather than their own.)

They do have a USP (pending market research) in that they have connectors for Exchange Server, SQL Server, Oracle etc. One other problem is that any client that installs their software, it has "the companys" logo all over it, and the client has to go to "the companys" website to use the online tools. So to that end it's not completely white label. "The company" also sells direct, so I fail to see what actual value, as a VAR I can actually be.

[HAWLEYJ]

Curious

Hello everyone.

I have recently been hired (in America) as a marketing director for a software interface for Amazon s3 servers. It is a true white-label software. We are on the very tail end of development, have a contract with our first customer that should go live in about a week, and are starting to ramp up our marketing. We are targeting specifically ISPs here in America, so it may not be the proper options for you.

However, my curiosity is piqued. Can I ask what kind of a business you are all in? And if I may be so bold, how many customers do you have that you could sell your own branded cloud storage solution to? Are they business? Residential? Do you have any advice or concerns about such a product that I should be aware of?

Thank you kindly for any and all information you can provide. I promise I will put it to good use!

Sincerley,
Justin Hawley
Marketing Director
Typhoon Cloud