Fast-growing online backup

Online backup, we also call it remote backup or cloud backup. It's a new type of data backup method to back up your files, folders, or the whole partition or disk to a remote server or computer with a network connection.

Its rationale is to do a regular backup for your data on a remote hard drive, providing higher security. With a high-speed internet connection and a web browser interface, it's just like the traditional backup to an external local hard drive.

A glance at present backup

For many enterprise users, data backup has become the main and the most boring routine work. Regular backup costs a lot of time and resources, and improper backup may even bring serious trouble. Recently an alternative solution is increasingly emerging into people's attention. Enterprise users pass their tedious work to third party service providers. This means you don't have to sit and wait for the tape or disk duplicating, and rack your brains to decide a perfect place to save the disk or tape so that you can get more redundancy when encountering data loss.

The companies which provide online backup service copy selected files automatically to offsite backup storage at the service provider's location. No matter you are individual consumers or large enterprises, there are a wide range of online backup services available to suit your needs. Of course, you will be charged for your valuable data security at the same time. But I think it's a wise investment.

Online backup vs traditional backup

Backup type	Online backup	Traditional backup
Data quantity	Best when the total amount to protect is less than 100 GB per 1 Mb of network bandwidth. For example, 100 GB can be supported by a 1 Mb WAN connection (such as DSL).	For large amounts of data, or for environments with limited network connectivity, traditional backup techniques are more appropriate.
Change rate	Best when the rate of change is less than 10% of the total data per month.	For data that changes frequently, traditional backup methods that use local disk and tape, with tape transport off-site are more appropriate.

Traditional backup has many disadvantages. Its onsite storage media are not maintained, monitored correctly and not tested on a regular basis. There will be many problems occurring when in time of disaster.

While, online backup with offsite backup storage only needs internet access, then a simple web browser can restore your data in less than five minutes from any location.

Online backup inevitably has its shortcomings. Many enterprises often have large amount of data to backup which needs fast internet speed support. Now the backup market has two camps: traditional disk based backup and online backup. As a new type of backup, it attracts attention for sure, but also is questioned by many users.

The future of online backup

Actually only very few enterprises have adopted online backup. Many analysts believe that the users will cost more than hundreds of millions of dollars on this backup service every year. There are many service supporters like AmeriVault, Asigra, Carbonite, DataVault, EMC, IBM, Intronis, Iron Mountain, Seagate and Symantec. The data privacy with online backup needs to be fully guaranteed, and supporters must have strong financial and technical strength to ensure enough server and bandwidth resource. Online backup has unlimited future but the barrier to entry into it is high too.

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