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Storage on a Budget for MSPs!

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

Offsite backup storage solutions at commodity hardware prices

Folks in the UK are building storage boxes that could house up to petabytes of data using commodity hardware.  Managed Service Providers can benefit from this cost-effective storage solution for their StoreGrid Backup or Replication servers.

This initially started as an effort by an online backup service provider to build cheap cloud storage for its own storage needs (thanks to them for sharing the design for those who wish to build their storage cost-effectively!).   This has triggered a few hardware architects in the UK to explore building cheap storage options for service providers.  Interested?  They are taking orders for the storage cases.

Would be interesting to see how Managed Service Providers use these cost-effective storage solutions to cut down the cost of their off-site storage and replace it with their own.  StoreGrid has partnered with leading storage technologies like the Amazon Cloud, Parascale and Caringo for the backup storage component of their online backup service.

Using StoreGrid, MSPs have a variety of options in setting up the backend for their service depending upon their customer needs.

1) Own servers in their data center / colo along with RAID drives / NAS storage devices / innovative storage pods as the one above for storage.

2) Amazon Cloud for running the backup service with StoreGrid running on EC2 instances (there’s a ready AMI with StoreGrid’s latest version pre-installed!) and Amazon’s S3 service for the storage.  This option features unbeatable pricing for offsite storage.

3) Parascale or Caringo cluster software for setting up the storage backend for StoreGrid backup/replication servers

4) Hybrid options using a combination of the above.  (E.g. on-premise backup server with data replication to the Amazon S3 service)

5) Locally attached drives in client machines for backups where you would like to have a copy available locally while having another copy in the backup server.

With so many cost-effective options, what are you waiting for?

The above post was written by Gokul Sriram of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.

Vembu Home is the only FREE consumer backup solution for free local backups and optional Amazon Cloud backups. Get your FREE COPY now.

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Posted in Online Backup, SP Edition



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TLM (Thought Leadership Marketing) for IT Service Providers

Monday, March 1st, 2010

Thought LeaderWhat the heck is this TLM? ‘Thought Leadership Marketing’ is a term that came on its own in the past few years.  Here is a definition of Thought Leadership from raintoday.com .

“Thought Leadership centers on earning trust and credibility. Thought leaders are noticed by offering something different – information, insights and ideas, for instance.”

For IT service Providers who are wondering what this TLM can do for them, here is the answer. According to the recent press release by Gartner , Thought Leadership Marketing can be a powerful tool for IT service Providers.

Also Gartner defines TLM as giving of information or advice for free or at nominal charge that a client will value so as to create awareness of the company’s product and stimulate demand for it in the market. Below are some of the key benefits of Thought Leadership Marketing.

1) TLM shortens the sales cycle
2) Change the pattern and terms of how people buy from you.
3) Diminish price resistance
4) Prospects experience your value before buying
5) Buyers invested in your service before purchasing
6) Growth in Social Media Placements
7) Assistance in SEO and SEM activities

TLM is one good piece of advice or information that can expressed via blogging, public speaking, writing articles and through various social media activities. According to Mark Peshoff, Senior director of Cisco, “Once Thought Leadership is established, the rest of the industry, the media, academia, government policy makers and the broader business community turn to that company for ideas and insights into where things are going”.  There are various programs employed for implementing TLM. However Gartner Analysts say that the company’s brand and positioning must form the basis for the development of TLM strategy.

Below are the Five Keys to successful TLM as per marketingsavant.com in the IT Service Provider Industry.

1) Be Generous with your knowledge – Share information beyond marketing
2) Be consistent in delivering information – Calendar your activities – daily, weekly etc.
3) Always deliver value to your clients – Listen, think, revise and teach
4) Take your strong positions in the market
5) Track your results in Months & Years.

The above post was written by Lenin Srinivasan of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.

Vembu Home is the only FREE consumer backup solution for free local backups and optional Amazon Cloud backups. Get your FREE COPY now.

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Posted in General, Marketing, Remote Backup, SP Edition



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On Vembu & VC Investment

Friday, February 19th, 2010

I keep getting emails from VC firms at regular intervals. I have had initial phone calls with many of them. But invariably there is no progress as we just do not act on raising money on our own because I fundamentally cannot get myself to pitch my business to a VC just to raise money. The reason is that I am uncomfortable doing a business plan on how I will scale the company.  Because until we try something out we will never know whether it is going to work or not. It is always continuous experiments you run and figure out ways to grow and scale. I am kind of tired trying to be polite and diplomatic with VCs, i.e. responding to their emails and taking their first call and then not taking any initiative in raising money. Couple of days ago when someone was persistent about having a call after I turned down a request for a call, I sent the following response. I want to post that response publicly and I am going to point all VCs who contact me to this post from now on.

“I don’t want to sound arrogant. It is not lack of time. I am pretty jobless trying to figure out ways to scale our company trying various new things. The problem is the serious lack of interest in pitching my company to investors. I have spoken to so many VCs on the phone. It’s always the same. I refuse to do a business plan projecting how we can scale. It is like an experiment we are running and it is against my personal nature to pitch my plans to investors – just to raise money – as something that will work without fail. VCs don’t understand my perspective and I can’t blame them as they have to justify their investments to their LPs. I cannot change my nature and personality just to raise money.  If anyone is interested in my company I prefer a one on one meeting. But I insist that I will not give a business plan nor I will pitch my company to raise money. The investment has to come because they instinctively trust me and have a somewhat religious belief that I will at least give their money back if not grow it by 10 times. That is the understanding with which our angel investors have invested in us, by the way. One of them is a VC and he thinks personally he has no problem with my style but as a VC he cannot convince his other partners. My yard stick for success is different from the pure professional investors.”

The above post was written by Sekar Vembu of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.

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Posted in General, Online Backup, Remote Backup, SP Edition, Trends, VC Investment, Vembu StoreGrid



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Microsoft features Vembu as ‘Startup of the Day’ in Microsoft Startup Zone

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Microsoft - Startup of the DayMore excitement rolls in as Microsoft BizSpark featured ‘Vembu’ as their ‘Startup of the Day’ on its website today.  As you might recall from my previous blog that Microsoft handpicked Vembu Technologies as one of the most promising 45 startup firms around 10 countries for the new ‘BizSpark One’ program and Vembu is the first and only firm from India to be selected for that Program.

As part of being the “Startup Of the Day” our CEO, Sekar Vembu was interviewed by the Microsoft BizSpark team. Here is a quote from the interview:

“It certainly feels good to be selected. Microsoft is especially relevant considering that over 90% of our deployments are on Windows Operating Systems. Additionally, our software, StoreGrid, is used to backup a lot of data created with Microsoft applications like Outlook, SQL Server & Exchange Server.”

Click here to read the full interview.

The above post was written by Lenin Srinivasan of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.

Vembu Home is the only FREE consumer backup solution for free local backups and optional Amazon Cloud backups. Get your FREE COPY now.

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Posted in General, Online Backup, Remote Backup, SP Edition, Vembu StoreGrid



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The Cloud: Substance wins over Form

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

The Cloud has garnered quite a bit of media storm since its advent with big names like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Sun throwing in their hats in the ring.   Not to mention the controversy kicked up by McKinsey’s uncharitable comments on the Cloud.

We have always believed that the Cloud would be a valuable addition to an MSP’s arsenal – and we went about supporting Amazon Cloud services precisely because of that.  This enabled our partners to either operate their entire backup service out of Amazon’s EC2/S3 services or simply leverage S3 storage service for the offsite replication.  And we are sure glad we were able to see the business value this brought to MSPs early on and be among the first to adopt this crucial step in the backup/storage industry.

The concepts of substance and form always been closely examined since historical times.    Steve DuPlessie (of ESG fame) gave a unique twist to this age-old ‘form vs. substance’ conundrum with this incisive post on the Cloud here -

Surely, the Cloud is a very convenient ‘construct’ – so much so that it took a lot of time for the industry and analysts to even pin down a definition for the Cloud!   Steve makes two significant points in this post – one, that ‘being’ a Cloud is a sure way to failing in the long run (after a great round A valuation, of course :-) ) and two, that ‘using’ the Cloud for viable solutions will be better off than those masquerading AS the Cloud.

The Cloud ‘form’ became very important for all those who sought to ride the media wave when the Cloud started getting a whole lot of media attention last year.  I noticed several BU/DR firms started sporting the term ‘Cloud Backups’.  This was funny since none of them had even the basic characteristics of cloud computing (like scalablilty (on the scale of the Amazon Cloud),  true pay-for-what-you-use model, etc.) – features which can only come through actual seamless integration of a backup solution with a Cloud service provider.

I believe that the ’substance’ of the Cloud is what counts for a service provider – the solution to her client’s problem that makes business sense for her to provide.  Not all the ‘form’ – backup players sporting websites with ‘Cloud’ strewn all over – the proverbial new bottle for their old wine.

Vembu StoreGrid has provided a perfect platform for MSPs to USE the Cloud where it makes perfect business sense.  Case in point, offsite replication from StoreGrid to Amazon’s dependable S3 storage service costs less than 50cents/GB/month*.  Before this, MSPs were used to spending ridiculous amounts to get offsite storage services of questionable security with no scalability or pay-for-use model.

We still see a lot of backup players going gung-ho about Cloud related terms for their backup solutions – Public Clouds (as opposed to what?), Hybrid Clouds (an umbrella term meant to cover all they wished were a Cloud, but wasn’t)…. and so on.

I see that when the dust settles on the Cloud phenomenon, MSPs will be quick to see what is getting passed of as ‘Cloud Backups’ to them.  I think the day when the skies will clear is not far off and all undeserved ‘Cloud Backup’ terms in several websites will be off in a jiffy!

* – As of  1st Feb 2010.  Please check the latest AWS pricing here.

The above post was written by Gokul Sriram of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.

Vembu Home is the only FREE consumer backup solution for free local backups and optional Amazon Cloud backups. Get your FREE COPY now.

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Posted in Amazon Cloud, Online Backup, SP Edition, Vembu StoreGrid



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