Online Backup Provider Should Defend Itself Against the ASA

 

Oh poor Carbonite. Everyone beating up on them. Stock price tumbling. Now they can’t say “unlimited” anymore in the UK. But this time I am going to stand up for them.

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority recently spanked the Boston (America) Based Carbonite in absentia for using the term “unlimited” in their ads because they say Carbonite throttles bandwidth after uploads of more than 200GB.

Carbonite says they never received the ASA’s mail asking them to defend themselves. So, the ASA got their knickers all in a twist and said that absent any response, Carbonite was guilty.

SO WHAT if Carbonite throttles bandwidth for more than 200GB of files uploaded? FINE I say. You can still upload an unlimited amount of data. Nobody has ever proven otherwise. SO THAT MAKES IT UNLIMITED!

(I think it’s stupid to send 200GB of personal data up your typically slow Internet connection anyway. What good is that? It would take forever to restore it. Business data, that’s a different story.)

I checked their terms of service, and it plainly says that they have the right to restrict certain accounts that abuse the service by deviating too far from the resources used by the average user. Allowing such abuse could adversely impact the service of other users, and Carbonite is quite right in restricting it.

If you don’t have such a clause in your TOS, you should.

But I’m not beating up on Carbonite. This time I am beating up on Mozy, because their senior marketing manager, Claire Galbois-Alcaix, decided to wade into this fray uninvited and quite boorishly, I thought, beating a competitor like just another member of the pitchfork-bearing mob.

I’m not going to repeat what she said here because I don’t want to give it any more press, so I’ll paraphrase. Without mentioning Carbonite by name, but releasing her statement at a strategically damaging time, Ms Gadsby-Alcaloide said the Carbonite case gives the industry a bad name, giving people a false sense of security, and hinted that Carbonite (or such companies) might be hiding their potentially catastrophic technical shortcomings.

Then she went on to slam the rest of us in innuendo, bringing up completely unrelated issues in a really goofy transparent effort to make you afraid of all other online backup providers except Mozy.

To be fair, she may have been caught off guard with the timing by the reporter from IT Pro who could have been trying to stir something up between rivals in a period of heated news about one of them. If so, shame on IT Pro, who otherwise reports the news fairly.

 

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.