May 10, 2008
Wilton company offers data backup for customer's peace of mind
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Austin McChord, president of Datto Backup, has been surprised and impressed by the way his business has quickly taken off.
“Things have been nuts,” said Mr. McChord. Soon after his product, which allows companies to backup their data both on the company’s site and off site as well, was picked up by a technology blog, business started to boom, he said.
The idea to have a company specializing in backing up data came from a simple enough source, a need for such a service in the marketplace.
“I thought the prices of the other backup services were a rip off,” said Mr. McChord. The company was founded last July, and since then has been involved in beta testing the service, which was rolled out in March.
Backing up data is something that every business needs and his company offers it at an affordable price, Mr. McChord said. The company offers a 100 gigabyte system for $399 with an annual service fee of $99, and a 500 gigabyte system for $599 with an annual service fee of $249.
“Five hundred gigabytes is more than enough for most companies,” said Mr. McChord. He added that his company’s marketing strategy has been targeting small businesses primarily.
For that price, the company sends its client a network backup device similar to a removable hard drive that backs up all of the clients’ data on site. But in addition to that, a client also sends his data via the Internet to another device located off site, assuring the data will be safe.
“You’re really buying two devices,” said Mr. McChord. If a company was to lose its data and its own backup device were to fail, the data would be safe by being located off site. Datto Backup would send the off site device within 24 hours, something that Mr. McChord said was better than other services that allow you to download all of your data instead of sending a physical device.
“That can actually take days,” to recover all of your data by downloading it, he said. “We can replace the data in under 24 hours.”
There are data centers located in New York and Arizona, and he said the devices had already been sold in 20 different states.
Datta Backup offers security to its clients, with each of the boxes communicating via AES + SSL key based encryption when sending data to the off site location. Mr. McChord said such security is better than what banks use for their online services.
Mr. McChord’s involvement with computers dates back to middle school when he was told his handwriting was “awful,” thus prompting him to learn how to type.
One of the advantages Mr. McChord said his company offers is its size. With the company currently consisting of him and another employee, “we’re good at meeting our customer’s needs” with a personalized experience. But with business off to a fast start, he said the company was now talking about the need for additional employees and office space.
The devices the company uses are also “highly customizable,” he noted, and can be fit to any need a company might have.
“It’s really just critical you back up your data,” he said.
© Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers
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