You wrote your own online backup software?

 

You wrote your own little online backup software! Aren’t you just adorable!?

Like most businesses I employ sales people. Some of them make phone calls all day long to businesses that we think might like to offer Online Backup Services using our software. Once a week or so someone we call gets all snarky and says, “We don’t need your software. We wrote our own.”

Our sales people are very polite, and they usually say something like, “OK, well, thank you for your time. Goodbye,” and then just move on to the next call.

But I am not so polite, and I fantasize about what I would say…

“Hey, it’s great to meet a fellow developer who has solved all the important issues like 100% compliant security and privacy, flexible file retention policies, locked files, correct support for Exchange, SQL Server and all those other databases, and 100% recovery, with an uninterrupted 25 year history of millions and millions of files backed up and restored.”

“I don’t know about you, but we’ve spent $3.7 million over the past 25 years developing our software, but you know what that’s like, right? Why, I’ll bet we’ve made every mistake in the book, and then fixed every one of them. Like you, we have seen and solved every online backup problem that exists.”

“It’s hard for the average person to know how much work people like you and I put into making 100% sure that end users’ files are safe, with software that has been brutally tested and proven by millions of customers over more than two decades, am I right?”

“Sometimes we run into someone who just tosses something together out of scripts and free software, and they manage to use it to copy files over the Internet automatically. But you know that’s not proper backup, right? Leaves GAPING holes in security and reliability. Worst of all, I have seen these guys lose files and customers because of their dumb scripts. I’ll bet you have, too!”

“Well, thanks for the conversation. I love talking with colleagues in this business. OK, I hope to see you at the next conference. Bye, now, and good luck!”

Reading between the lines, here’s what I’m saying.

I can 100% guarantee that unless you have spent a lot of money in development with many years of feedback from millions of end users, you are not backing up properly. You are putting your customers’ data at high risk, and you are most likely not compliant with HIPAA or any other security and compliance regulations.

You are not meeting your customers’ needs, and they probably think you are, so you are doing them a disservice.

 

Rob Cosgrove is the President of Remote Backup Systems, founder of the Online Backup Industry, and a vocal advocate for maintaining the highest standards in Online Backup software. His latest book, the Online Backup Guide for Service Providers: How to Start and Operate an Online Backup Service, is available online now, on Amazon.com, and at bookstores.

Remote Backup Systems provides brandable, scalable software and solutions to MSPs and VARs enabling them to offer Online Backup Services.