Seen it Cheaper
You might be comparing apples, but not all are quality providers as there is more to the industry than you know!
In the last few years, Online backup providers have tended to compete on price, undercutting each other’s rates and subsequently artificially devaluing the worth of their services to customers.
Commodity pricing is like dancing – it takes two to tango. That is, if one backup provider drops its price, it’s likely a competitor will feel compelled to also offer discounts to effectively compete for customers, even though it lowers profit margins and puts their business and customer’s data in a risky position.
Such pricing strategy is commodity-driven and, thus, self-defeating.
Many Australian cloud backup providers are gambling on selling large volumes at very low margins, although storage is cheap, enterprise grade redundant storage is very expensive to both purchase and to maintain correctly and backup, so unless they have realistic pricing or corporate funding, this formula is likely to get them into serious trouble at some point in the near future.
This pressure to reduce cloud storage prices can be traced back to the prevailing and false perception of storage by an ill informed group of people in the IT industry.
For us, pricing is all about value and peace of mind that we are providing to our astute customers.
Hardware
To provide customers with the right protection backup providers need to use fully enterprise grade redundant storage with service agreements, however this is very expensive and expensive to maintain correctly and backup, so you have to wonder how a low cost operator can provide customers with the protection of enterprise grade storage at such low costs. They simply can’t.
They use cheap non-enterprise grade white label or consumer hardware that’s simply not designed for the task and not fully supported on services contracts and this equipment doesn’t have the reliability that such a service requires.
Backup247 uses its own fully redundant full enterprise grade hardware, supported by 4 hour onsite replacement contracts 24×7/365 to guarantee our customers data is completely protected at a hardware level.
Support
By running on low margins most low cost operators are often “one man businesses” and by selling at very low margins these providers are never likely to have adequate staffing numbers and little to no technical support for their customers.
Which in turn means the “support to customer” ratio is very high which often means they are unable to provide the support quality you should expect when you need it and are not able to provide proactive communication you require to have a reliable and secure backup.
Backup247 offers premium quality support, with fully trained technicians that are available 24×7/365 for urgent support.
Bandwidth
When margins are tight, bandwidth is often an area that is oversold. This means there is not enough bandwidth for the number of customers; when you need to get the data up or down in a hurry it’s not going to be possible, and as a consequence, backup and restoration speed is often limited.
Backup247 carefully monitors bandwidth reports, data and customer growth and regularly upgrades bandwidth to provide customers with ultra fast uploads and downloads.
Customers are welcome to trial the software and perform bandwidth tests for uploads and downloads; you’ll be impressed!
Data Centres
Low cost operators make a lot of big claims, but put simply, quality data centres aren’t cheap and claims of multiple data centres throughout Australia don’t make sense. The costs are very high and it’s likely it’s a lot of smoke and mirrors. A number of providers aren’t using data centres at all and host their servers and storage in their homes or even garages.
Your data should be in a secure climate controlled environment that has access to multiple internet ultra high speed data carriers with redundant power and fire protection otherwise it’s not secure and or to be considered highly available.
Our Sydney and Melbourne Datacentres continue to operate with 99.99% uptime and stringent SLA with its suppliers to ensure uninterrupted operation.
Many IT and web development businesses offer online backup as a value added service, however this is not their primary focus and therefore is not their top priority, as they only offer this service as some extra income it’s not treated with the importance that it really deserves. It is often setup and forgotten about and not fully managed.
Backup247 primary business is the backup and recovery of customer data, it’s all we do and it is what we do best. All of our energy is put into making sure our customers can backup and restore successfully any time they need too.
Longevity
Low cost operators are taking a big gamble; low prices mean tight margins and in a tough economic climate this is often a fatal decision. This industry often sees new cloud backup providers appear and disappear again with only a handful of providers have been around longer than a few years and many of them are struggling and up for sale due to financial problems.
Low profit margins means the business will unlikely succeed. If you choose one of these businesses you will likely be forced to move to another provider and the hassle of starting this process all over again.
Many Backup247 customers have been with other providers first and have be forced to move when their provider has shutdown or have chosen to move due to poor backup performance.
Our solid financial and structural growth has been consistent year-on-year since 2006. We know that, above all, you care about your business data and your business systems, which is why you’ll get the kind of company stability needed from Backup247.
The current Industry
The current cloud industry is unregulated and is extraordinarily dangerous, not only because low cost providers drive down cloud storage prices, but because this in turn marginalizes the importance of data backup and disaster recovery in the eyes of the customer.
It’s your data and your decision.
Make the right choice.
