I have just completed an information document which shows how to request, install and test an SSL certificate. This certificate is important to companies who sell our backup service to securely backup and restore (business) data, as well as access their website.

BackupAgent requires a certified SSL connection between its clients and servers. Certificates that serve this purpose can only be purchased at Certificate Authorities. In the past, some of our partners tried to use self-signed certificates, but this is not secure. The basic idea behind SSL is that some authority grants a combination of public and private keys, which prevents hackers from posing as a company that provides online backup services.

A user can be certain he or she connects to a server that is owned by the company he or she does business with. This can only be true if some independent authority matches a private request of that company with a unique public key based on the master key of the CA. This is basis for PKI. Some technicians might argue that there is no technical difference between a self-signed certificate and one of a CA. Although this is true, I think they underestimate the legal role of CA’s which provides more certainty that a company is legitimate. The CA’s have to qualify to stringent legal standards to obtain their status. That’s why BackupAgent only works with official SSL certificates.

Last week one of our partners was in urgent need of support since one of his clients was recovering from an apocalyptic disaster. Because of the nature of business it was crystal clear that the customer would go bankrupt if critical data could not be recovered. We had to make sure all data was restored in a consistent state.

The partner addressed our tech support, because not all data seemed to be restored correctly. After some hours of thorough analysis of the data by our CTO and me, we discovered that the partner apparently was using the wrong encryption key. This rang a bell at the side of the partner and after checking their administration they retrieved the correct encryption key for restoring. Now all relevant data was restored correctly and the customer was back in business.

The example shows that in some cases good software must be complemented by adequate and responsive support. The customer was under great pressure to get back to business within a reasonable timeframe. This - yet another - satisfied customer also shows that our partner model allows us to prevent bankruptcy in case of data loss.

BackupAgent is conquering the Nordics. We have recently closed deals with distributor SmartHost and system integrator Pulsen. Although they have just started, SmartHost is already very successful and has signed up the first resellers that are selling BackupAgent actively to their customers. An example can be found below.




Although my knowledge of the Swedish language is not what it used to be :-), I have to mention that this looks pretty slick. The upcoming Winter of ’08-’09 will be a very cold one in Scandinavia. For our Partner Managers of the Nordic region, who will be spending quite some time visiting local partners, I advise them to take a look at these useful tips...

I visited Pulsen, a Swedish company, two weeks ago in a joint effort to roll-out their online backup service based on BackupAgent. Pulsen, amongst many hosters, ISP’s and Telco’s, use the Microsoft Hosted Messaging and Collaboration (HMC) platform to offer service such as Hosted Exchange. HMC also offers an open provisioning platform which allows services like BackupAgent to be offered to customers in a similar fashion as the customer consumes Hosted Exchange.

BackupAgent offers a very short time-to-market for hosters that already invested in an HMC platform, since we reuse the complete infrastructure which they already built and invested in. Because of this, hosters can shorten their return-on-investment regarding HMC because they can offer an additional service using the existing platform.

Interesting effect of platforms like HMC is that it changes the perspective for hosters regarding the launch of new services. Core competences and requirements regarding provisioning and monitoring are already in place, which lowers risks, implementation times and technical effort to enable a new service. As long as an ISV like BackupAgent supports the platform, the hoster can focus most of its efforts on the commercial proposition and marketing.

Some BackupAgent partners I spoke fear the upcoming of Microsoft as a service provider. Personally, I think that only a limited part of the market can be served by Microsoft in this respect. The way I see it, they encourage the hosting community to differentiate, instead of entering competition based on price. Microsoft offers hosted services to enforce a shift in paradigm in the price-focused, volume-driven hosting companies. They challenge companies to gain new competences, both technically and commercially. Since I’ve seen how some hosters are struggling with this theme, I think it will lead to a more mature hosting community with products and services that have a higher added-value for the customer.

We deliver white label solutions to our partners. This is part of our standard offering and also required by most of our partners. At BackupAgent, we go one step beyond the standard white label options that most vendors supply. Of course we adopt the logo and contact information in the client software, but we also provide the partner very extensive rebranding options on the server side and the ability to have fully rebranded communication with its customers.

On the server side, each partner can customize the management console to display its own brand. Style sheets can be adjusted to change the common look and feel of the management console, including settings of colors, fonts etc. Next to that, individual resellers of partners can apply their look and feel to the management console. This way our partners can offer their resellers the possibility to resell a rebranded backup service.

Since status reporting is a very important part of online backup, the server software generates a lot of e-mails to inform end-users. For instance when a backup or restore has been performed, but also when you forgot your password or when you create a new account. Our management console allows each partner, and again also each reseller of the partner, to change these emails in HMTL. This way, emails can be personalized by adding logo’s, references to FAQs, the partner website etc.

Lastly, each partner or reseller can ‘push’ messages to the client software. On the dashboard of the client software a message and a link can be displayed. For example for maintenance announcements, special offers or just a link to the partner webpage.

Our solution adapts to its customers like a chameleon to its environment. All these options go far beyond the standard white label solution that many vendors offer, and that is exactly what we want to offer…. more than the standard!

BackupAgent will be represented this year on both Infosecurity and Storage Expo, on November 12-13 in Jaarbeurs Utrecht, The Netherlands. As vendor of online backup software, BackupAgent will present its products and inform you on all the possibilities of our software. When you are a reseller, VAR, ISP/ASP or IT-administrator of a company, don’t hesitate to visit us. Our solutions are suitable for all business environments. We hope to welcome you on the event with a delicious cup of coffee.

• Infosecurity –Hall 8, Booth E060 (jointly with our distributor TechAccess)
• Storage Expo – Hall 9, Booth C030

If you want to register for free for a visit to the event and our booth, click here.

Since last week we have a new toy in our office. Well, the toy itself is nothing new, but it is new in our office. It’s a football table.
So every now and then, during lunches and at the end of the day, we play Sales vs. Support or Engineering vs. Marketing.
Best thing about the table is that the teams are in BackupAgent colors; blue and orange. This way, we always play the ‘Backups’ vs. the ‘Agents’.
As we are all part of a winning team, some of our team can even be more winning.

When I started this blog, I looked at the wiki about Football tables. There I found something remarkable; football tables already exist since 1922! Another remarkable thing I found was the existence of a football table where you really can play with 11 vs. 11 (11 persons on each side of the table). That would have been a great choice for us, since more people can play at one time. On the other hand I can imagine that one game takes a very long time. And after all, people need to work in the office…..

Every now and then I have discussions with partners regarding compliance. In most cases, these discussions regard regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and HIPAA. Also, other general regulations involve obligations to store information for a certain number of years. Although there is a distinct connection between data backup and compliance, I sometimes think that people are confused about the purpose of compliance.

You cannot become compliant by applying the right backup procedure. Companies can only backup in the wrong way (or not at all) and if they do, they bear a larger risk of not being compliant. This is because regulations like SOX are supposed to prevent people from committing fraud. One part of SOX involves responsibility for information. Executives should make sure that important information is always available and that access is secured. This prevents them from being able to purge information which proves mismanagement. Missing information is just as bad as compromising information regarding fraud.

So proper backup is no guarantee for compliance. If executives deliberately hide or destroy information and data, there is no way any backup service can recover it. Having a proper backup and recovery strategy does not assure that you are compliant, in case information is allegedly missing. This is why there are no compliance certifications for backup software.

Also, compliance does not apply on all data. Financial statements and contracts are far more relevant regarding compliance than any other kind of data, but they form only a fraction of all data of a business. The practical damage of data loss will outweigh a compliance issue most of the time.

Summarizing this, I do recommend you to make secure, encrypted online backups so you can avoid incompliance, but please do not assume compliance by choosing the right backup method.

As support engineer I’m often the piggy in the middle, or “tussen de wal en het schip” as we say in Dutch. At one hand there is the Sales Department, who would like to see our product as if it were Play-Doh and you could mould it into any shape that fits customer needs, whenever they would want to. On the other hand you have our Developers, who seem to speak another language altogether and have a totally different definition of time than the rest of us. It is always a challenge to be the interpreter of these two factions.

I have learned over time that the pressure on Development can be quite fierce, as they are the core of the company and without them there would not be a product. That is why it is important to show your developers that you care about them, despite the ruthless demands, and that sometimes all they need to go on, is a human hug:

This title is directly derived from the dogma that ruled the computer industry in the 80’s:

“Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM”

In the 80’s IBM was the safe choice for an engineer, since the alternatives were cheap clones which bared the risk of failure and unsupported hardware. As for online backup, BackupAgent is considered a safe choice for several reasons. Doing business with BackupAgent does not only involve buying our software. We offer a lot more.

Any kind of partner

We help our partners in developing a successful online backup business case. We can do this since we have done so already for various types of partners:

• Hosting companies
• System integrators
• DSL providers
• IT Service & Infrastructure companies
• Independent Software Vendors
• Value-Added Resellers
• Large Enterprises

We’ve seen success and failure amongst our partners and we are more than happy to share our knowledge to new partners that are open for our advice and committed.

The right price

Our pricing strategy is based on the ambitions of our partners. Over the years we have crafted and shaped our pricing models. We know what our partners charge for their services and how this price structure is built up. Our licensing model has evolved around it.

Outstanding support and services

Some of our partners run into complex technical or commercial scenarios. Our support department always helps out. We have some highly skilled and well-trained people in our staff, who know all there is to know about online backup. We’ve done various integration projects where we embedded our services in existing billing and provisioning systems. Also, we know all there is to know on proper storage infrastructures and vendors. We’ve seen over hundreds of large and small datacenters and configurations.

The right product features

Our online backup software is designed to backup business data. Therefore we support some very popular business applications, such as MS Exchange and SQL Server. We combined our software with several software packages and business solutions of specialized vendors.

Nobody ever got fired for buying BackupAgent, since BackupAgent will help the partner in building a successful business case. So if you are struggling with this theme today, give us a call and we help you out.