BackupAgent is looking at an exciting agenda when it comes planned events, second half of 2010:

Date	Event	Place
June 24th, 2010	Business Matters LIVE	Luton, Bedfordshire, UK
July 11-15, 2010	Microsoft WPC 2010	Washington D.C, United States
July 19-21, 2010	HostingCon	Austin, TX, United States
September 24-26, 2010	Parallels APAC Summit 2010	Singapore
October 12-28, 2010	Parallels EMEA Partner Forum	Multiple
November 24, 2010	SaaS4Channel	Lelystad, Netherlands

We are looking forward to meeting you on one of these events and you can always schedule a meeting with us, by contacting us.

This may be a bit late, but we still like to wish all our partners all the best for 2010! As for BackupAgent, we are looking at an exciting agenda when it comes planned events, first quarter of 2010.

Parallels Summit 2010
Like last year, we’ll be present at the Parallels summit. It is the golden oppertunity to meet with your industry peers and form new alliances to build better Cloud Services based businesses. The summit is held February 22 – 24th in Miami (Florida, USA).

WebhostingDay
WebhostingDay unites the decision makers of the leading web hosting companies from Europe, America and Asia, thus providing an ideal venue for an exchange of experiences as well as networking among equals. Meet us here on March 17 – 19th in Bruehl, Germany.

Microsoft Hosting Summit
We also plan to visit the Microsoft Hosting Summit for the third consecutive time. This is due 28 – 29th of April in Seattle.

Last year we met a lot of new business partners on these events. This year we look forward to meeting up with them again to brainstorm on further growth of the online backup business. Next to that, we do expect to meet new potential partners as well.

In the beginning of this year we announced our attendance at the Parallels Summit 2009 that was held last February in Las Vegas. Due to the success of this summit and our partnership with Parallels, we will join Parallels in their first EMEA Partner Roadshow as a sponsor and attendee. This European Roadshow is meant to provide Parallels Partners with education, business opportunities and valuable connections to software partners such as BackupAgent. Parallels will help partners align their business with the Parallels product line-up like BackupAgent’s online backup solution and create specific sales plans focused on boosting revenue.

The 2009 Parallels Partner Roadshow will be take place in the following cities:

• Stockholm, Sweden - September 1
• Amsterdam, The Netherlands - September 3
• Warsaw, Poland - September 7
• Cologne, Germany - September 10
• Paris, France - September 14
• Madrid, Spain - September 17
• London, England - September 21

BackupAgent has a speaking slot in every city and will present its online backup proposition for Service Providers with an attractive special offer. I think Parallels offer of in-depth information and demonstrations on cloud computing best practices - such as SaaS and automation – is a goldmine for every Service Provider. So don’t hesitate to register and to come visit us at the EMEA Partner Roadshow!

Yesterday I arrived in Seattle for the Microsoft Hosting Summit 2009. In the airplane I realized that I forgot all my business cards…pretty inconvenient if you have your own booth at the show.
So after checking in at the Hotel, I went to the local FedEx Kinko’s at 11 PM (off course in the US everything is open 24 hours). I downloaded the cards from our backup server, gave an overnight order and this morning at 7 AM I could pick up my 100 freshly printed business cards….for only 30 US Dollars…..that’s almost cheaper than at home!

Hi, here a small post from the hotel room in Las Vegas. Although it’s my third time in this city in the desert, it keeps surprising me.
I am here to attend the Parallels Summit 2009, which BackupAgent is actually sponsoring. The summit is held in the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, a huge place and much larger than the Amsterdam RAI, the largest convention center in The Netherlands.
The great thing about the summit is the variety of people that are attending the summit; ISPs, hosting companies, telecom companies and SaaS-providers, coming from all over the world.
Last night, while having drinks on the 64th floor in the Mix Lounge and looking over the Strip and seeing the MGM, Bellagio, Monte Carlo and Ceasars Palace, the networking went pretty well. After all, it doesn’t matter where you’re from; the IT-business has the same developments and challenges and business is always done in similar ways. The ambiance of this city makes doing business a bit more attractive:

A while ago I visited Washington DC to visit a potential partner, DS3 Datavaulting. At that time the country was still in the hands of the Bush administration. Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama were enrolled in a tough Democratic candidate election. The outcome was yet unclear.

Next week I will visit DS3 Datavaulting again, this time as partner. Since I will stay over for the weekend I have time to feel some of the vibes in the aftermath of the historic ‘change’ that came over the US by the inauguration of Barack Obama as the new president.

After my visit to DS3 Datavaulting I will go to Las Vegas, Nevada. We will be attending the Parallels Summit on 2 until 4 February. Based on the masses that joined to see the inauguration I expect to meet a lot of people with a very good mood and renewed energy to do business.

This week NetPage, a company in The Gambia, has purchased a software license for BackupAgent. NetPage holds their offices in Banjul, the capital of The Gambia. The Gambia is one of the smallest nations on the African continent and is geographically formed around Gambia River. It is almost completely encapsulated by Senegal, except for the shore on the west coast of Africa:


We are very proud to welcome The Gambia on our growing list of countries we are serving. It seems that NetPage is one of driving forces behind further broadband penetration and this paves the market for online backup services.

We run a very international business. I travel around the world to meet (potential) partners and explore opportunities in various countries. Nowadays we have BackupAgent partners in 17 countries. We are gradually expanding our partner network across Europe and North-America.

Occasionally we get foreign visitors in our office. Last week we had a visit from the president of an IT firm in Canada. He decided to travel to our headquarters in Delft to learn all there is to know about BackupAgent. I can highly appreciate such an initiative since this shows a lot of commitment and interest in our company. He was pleased to hear that we also fully support the French language for his potential customers in Quebec.

It is nice and helpful to see a face behind a partner company, because it gives us a better understanding of the people and the business they are doing. We strongly believe in a thing called 'vitamin R' (which is not Ritalin but Relation). We want to know all the whereabouts of our partners so we can fully support them as they are developing their online backup business. It is very interesing for us to know how our partners approach the market, what level of support and service they provide and if they combine with other services or products. And obviously it is highly appreciated when partners take the time to travel to our office.

This 'vitamin R' approach is also very important for us to qualify our partners. Each partner has unique competencies and can cover a specific segment of the market, either geographically, by target market or otherwise. It allows us to cover a broader market.

During my holiday on Curaçao I drove around the island and noticed the numerous small shops and companies at the side of the road. Even larger enterprises have representation on the island in the form of a single, small office building. Considering the market coverage in the Caribbean I concluded that we could service the complete business market, since it consists only of small companies.

I shared my findings with a couple of locals and for the larger part of the discussion they saw the great potential of the opportunity. Unfortunately one important factor for providing online services is completely insufficient. Apparently, the complete internet traffic of Curaçao is transferred to the rest of the world using 30 mbits of line capacity. This makes it almost impossible to backup large amounts of gigabytes. Therefore online backup services can only apply to small accounts, limited to just a few gigabytes.

Even with this limitation the market size can still be considered reasonable, since many companies are very small and have only a small data set to backup. However, IT and automation is not as much a significant part of these companies as it is in the US or Europe. I realized this when I checked in on my flight from Curaçao to Aruba. The local airline used a hand-written list to check off my name when I boarded.

Reviewing all this I concluded that the market for online backup in the Caribbean has its limitations. So far, the largest and most important industry of the island, tourist business, does not seem to be very dependent of its backups, since the sun will shine, no matter what will happen.