Build your own backup plan at the new SOSOnlineBackup.com!

No business online backup plan will match a one-size-fits-all solution. Every business has a variety of needs and rarely a similar environment. That’s why we’ve created a shopping experience at SOSOnlineBackup.com that frees business IT managers, network administrators, and owners to customize their own plan, in just three simple steps.

This new online backup shopping experience is simple. In just three steps, you’ll be able to see pricing for monthly, yearly, and two year plans.

Step 1: Identify the number of Windows-based servers you need to back up. These might be Windows servers, Sharepoint servers, Exchange servers, or others.

Step 2: Identify the amount of cloud storage your business needs.

Step 3: View your calculated monthly, annual, and two year plans!

Not only is buying SOS for Business now easier than ever before, but it now includes centralized management and remote deployment.

Centralized Management

Access centralized management through the administrative Dashboard. Backups in your business is simple. From this single page, you’ll have access to the following tools:

• Remove management
• Report scheduling and access
• Sub-account provisioning
• Server license provisioning
• GB usage
• Username and password creation for sub-accounts

Remote Deployment

• Remote deployment: Use our MSI to deploy backups across your network, no matter where your offices, workstations, and servers are located.
• Remote monitoring: Our Dashboard allows you to monitor your backups from any web browser and any internet connection. View backup events behind any firewall (or no firewall at all).
• Remote account creation: Our Dashboard will enable your IT department to create online backup accounts for existing employees, new employees, and new devices. SOS for Business allows companies to create an unlimited number of online backup accounts.

Complete Bare Metal Backup and Recovery for Servers

• Windows servers (2003, 2008, SBS 2003, SBS 2008)
• SQL servers (2005, 2008, and 2010)
• SharePoint servers (2008 and 2010)
• Exchange servers (Exchange 2000, Exchange 2003, Exchange 2008, and Exchange 2010)
• Full local machines – All operating systems, system state, program, and application files
• Transactionally consistent backups – Application aware backup synchronized to create bare metal backup images only when database transactions are complete.

Plans start as low as $139/month with bare metal backup to the cloud an only $59.99/month for file & folder backup. Customize your online backup plan today!

 

 

SOS for Business Featured in PCMagazine’s Disaster Preparedness Series

PCMagazine.com is a go-to source for business and residential online backup information. As such, their writer, Samara Lynn has been hard at work at a disaster preparedness series for business. We’re very excited that she’s chosen to feature SOS for Business!

SOS for Business is renowned for its use of geographically separated data centers (in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and South Africa). PCMagazine makes note of this feature, as well as our military-grade encryption in their article “Disaster Preparedness: Executing the Plan”.

For businesses with highly-sensitive data, some backup providers can address any data security concerns. SOS for Business provides military grade encryption. The company uses a three-tiered approach when it comes to securing backups: data is encrypted locally on the computer before being transferred over an encrypted connection and finally copied to the SOS cloud where the file is kept, encrypted, in multiple, geographically-separated data centers. So your business data is getting a double-layer of redundancy. SOS offers an additional security option, UltraSafe, encrypts data with a private key that only the account-holder has access to, even the team at SOS can’t access the data.

There are some very exciting changes in the works to SOS for Business. Stay tuned, what’s already good about this software is about to become great!

Interested in trying out SOS for Business? Start your free 175GB, 14 day trial today!

Crowdsourcing online backup software features and solutions : SOS Partner Beta Group

Our engineering road map has always been a busy one. But what if it wasn’t the right one? What if it could have been made better, if we based it solely on what our customers and online backup reseller partners had to say? We’ve taken the “what if” out of the sentence and made this a reality by creating the SOS Partner Beta Group.

What is the SOS Partner Beta Group?

The SOS Partner Beta Group is a forum for and by our wholesale partners. Our partners, CEO, Product Manager, and Director of Marketing are constantly discussing and voting on features and products that our online backup solution should encompass. This is crowdsourcing at its best!

How does crowdsourcing work in the SOS Partner Beta Group? 

The SOS Partner Beta Group is a permission based group – so you do have to be a partner to join. Right now, there are over 40 features being voted on. Members of the SOS Partner Beta Group can even see which ones are planned and currently in development. New feature suggestions will be voted on and placed in our engineering development cycle to be worked on over the next 2 – 6 weeks. This process will keep going in order to create the best online backup software in the business.

Considering becoming an SOS Online Backup Partner? 

Are you not yet an SOS Online Backup partner, but you’d like to participate in a similar group? Don’t worry, we’ve got your covered. Be one of the first to start a discussion in our “Considering Becoming a Partner” forum. Submit your feature requests, suggestions, and thoughts today!

Learn, discuss, engage: talk to us about selling online backup

SOS Online Backup is eager to help our partners grow, learn, and of course – sell more online backup! In the past few weeks we’ve been working on develop more methods for you to engage with us online, at your convenience, and give us your thoughts on being a reseller of online backup.

2012 is a fascinating year to be selling online backup. Users are much more aware of online backup and “the cloud” than they ever have been. Businesses are eager to implement business continuity plans and disaster recovery initiatives.

Join us at the following online venues. Tell us about your business, ask us questions, and let’s grow together!

Twitter.com/SOSPartners

Facebook Group: SOS Online Backup for Partners

LinkedIn Group: SOS Online Backup for Partners

Not already an SOS partner? Learn more about our program by watching these quick partner program videos.

Webinar: Online Backup is Booming in Australia and New Zealand

Calling all managed service providers from Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific! SOS Online Backup is hosting a special webinar, at a special time, for MSPs on the other side of the International Date Line.

You’re invited to join us on 25 May at 9:30 AM AEST for this live, free webinar. Click here to register for this webinar, hosted by CEO of SOS Online Backup, Ken Shaw.

This webinar will cover all the essentials of selling online backup:

• Industry overview
• SOS online backup reseller program overview
• Product features
• Competitive overview
• Pricing
• Product demo

We’re eager to help our ANZ IT professionals learn more about selling affordable, competitive, online backup.

We hope to see you there!

Software Reseller Program from SOS : Take a Tour of the SOS 360 Degree Partner with CEO and Founder, Ken Shaw

On March 15th, SOS Online Backup CEO, Ken Shaw, took a group of IT business owners through the SOS 360 Degree Partner Program. This webinar included an overview of the online backup reseller program, SOS software, features, and an ongoing Q&A session. You can view a recording of this webinar by clicking the link below.

Click here to view Ken’s webinar.

If you own and operate an IT services business, you may already offer online backup and disaster recovery solutions to your clients. Start investigating this broad horizon of opportunity for your technology services business. Ken’s webinar is a great place to start learning about online backup, reseller programs, and what to look for in an online backup solution.

The SOS 360 Degree Partner Program is a complete business in a box solution for managed service providers, or business owners looking to get into the MSP space. SOS offers re-branded software, sales and marketing materials, live training webinars, merchant account integration, a customized website template, and more.

Learn more about the SOS 360 Degree Partner Program on our website. Click here.

Cloud Storage Reviews: The Cloud is Here to Stay – Wired.com

Wired.com published a fascinating and very revealing article about the use of cloud services in business. At SOS, we love statistics, and this article is chock full of them. Check out some of these insightful statistics about cloud backup in business, brought to you by Wired.com:

1. 70 percent of businesses are either using or investigating cloud computing solutions.

2. In 2011, two-thirds of companies surveyed were planning or had already deployed cloud-based technologies.

3. 30% of small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) used cloud software in 2011.

4. Worldwide IT spending on cloud computing has increased more than 25 percent from 2008 to 2012.

5. 48 percent of U.S. government agencies moved at least one workflow to the cloud following the new requirement that federal agencies adopt a “cloud-first” policy.

For all those businesses that have readily adopted cloud computing and embraced it with open arms, there is a group of hold out SMBs that are resisting the move to the cloud. The article approaches another potent topic – arguments against cloud computing.

Argument 1: cloud computing is just another iteration of SaaS and ASP, which ultimately failed.

Wired counters this argument by observing that bandwidth of much cheaper these days, which was a major impediment to ASP and SaaS in the past.

Argument 2: Security and compliance are weaker in the cloud

Actually, it’s often stronger and better. Wired quotes a 2010 survey that showed 57 percent of respondents agreed that cloud computing actually improved their security.

Argument 3: Cloud computing is too expensive

SMBs often find cloud computing to be affordable and allow for the outsourcing of core competencies such as security and data center hosting. This brings them the benefits of this cloud-centric security knowledge, without the cost. A study cited by Wired notes that 74 percent of the respondents said that using the cloud reduced their infrastructure costs.

Are you considering backing your business up to the cloud? You can start a 175GB 14 day free trial with SOS Online Backup for Business right now. Check us out, see why SOS has won the PC Magazine Editor’s Choice award four times. Download the free 175GB trial here.

SOS also offers affordable server backup solutions (without a hardware purchase requirement!). Backup your entire business – from workstations to Exchange servers to SQL servers with SOS. Learn more about our total business backup solution, SOS ServerSave.

Data Backup Free Trial – SOS Online Backup Announces Version 5.2 : Faster, Simpler, Stronger

Today we’re excited to announce version 5.2 of the SOS Online Backup and SOS ServerSave backend upload agent. To put it succinctly, this new technology is faster, simpler, and stronger.

First, we’ll roll out this new technology to our SOS ServerSave users. Very soon, you’ll receive information about how to download the new executable, which will install right over your existing client.

Here are some major feature updates that you can look forward to. If you’ve been waiting to get started on SOS ServerSave – now’s the time!

SOS was fast before, now we’re even faster.

SOS ServerSave has been updated with version 5.2 of the backend upload agent. This new upload agent will increase your upload speeds nearly 2x. The following examples illustrate how much faster the new SOS ServerSave upload capabilities are:

• A 15 GB file uploads 25% faster
• A 200 GB file uploads 28% faster
• On a 100,000 file set, it uploads 43% faster.

SOS software is designed to perform the fastest initial uploads. 

SOS ServerSave and SOS Online Backup now benefit from improved Intellicache functionality. This means that the software is able to cut down on network and disk usage.

SOS has never throttled your back ups, but now you can better maximize your connection speed with version 5.2. This new version of the upload agent actually adapts to the network connection quality that is being used, and improves upload speed. Additionally, if you happen to lose your internet connection during a backup, you’ll be able to resume the transfer at any time.

Speed is also a benefit of our improved compression and encryption performance, which does apply to bare metal images as well as standard files and folders. SOS software still encrypts data locally, in transit and at rest in the data center – but now we do it faster.

Enhanced Recovery Features

SOS Online Backup and SOS ServerSave’s recoveries will now be faster, and resumable. Recovery will no longer require temporary disk space.

New Centralized Management and Reporting

Pulse Centralized Management is getting a new role in SOS ServerSave. It is no longer necessary to install Pulse as a separate management agent, because it’s now included in Online Backup & Recovery Manager.  You’ll also be able to receive email reports with a list of the “top 20 errors”. We’ve also made detailed backup progress descriptions available.

Hey you – are you shopping around? 

If you are shopping around and considering SOS ServerSave for your business’ server backup solution, click here to request a free trial!

Or if you’d like to get into the nitty-gritty of what SOS ServerSave offers, click here to view our features grid.

Server Backup Online : Take a Recorded Tour of SOS ServerSave

If you have a business, you don’t have time to worry about backup. But even worse, you wouldn’t have time to deal with recovering data if you ever lost it! You probably have at least two servers and dozens of laptops – you have a lot of data to secure. Fortunately, SOS ServerSave gives you a uniquely simple backup solution to protect all of that valuable business data in the cloud. You may have checked out our website a time or two, but aren’t sure this solution is complete enough for you. Worry not! Just take a look at our most recent live webinar to learn more about SOS ServerSave.

View the SOS ServerSave webinar here.

SOS ServerSave is a complete and affordable online backup solution for businesses. With SOS ServerSave, you can perform bare metal backups and send them to the cloud. Backup all of these important devices:

– Exchange servers

– SQL and SharePoint servers

– Windows servers

– Fileservers

– Laptop fleets

– Workstations

Better yet…once you sign up for an SOS Online Backup account, you’ll have free access to our native Android and iPhone apps!

Cloud Storage Reviews : Cloud-Based Backup Continues to Gain Favor with Small to Medium Sized Businesses

Last week, Forrester Research released a report titled “Cloud-Based Backup Gaining Favor with SMBs: Report”, which once again confirms that SMBs are moving to the cloud in droves. Cloud backup software as a service and off site data centers are great for the SMBs.   Employing cloud backup services in their businesses allow them to invest in their core competency, rather than their IT services for internal stakeholders.

Why are SMBs moving to the cloud? 

The number one reason SMBs are moving to the cloud is data security. They are comfortable with the new environment and the safety it can provide to their data.

A secondary, though still important, reason for moving to the cloud is speed of implementation and deployment. The SOS ServerSave business backup solution can take as little as 10 minutes for a professional to install and prepare to back up a server. Getting backup processes up and running for an entire business truly is simple.

Growth opportunities for MSPs

Managed service providers selling backup solutions, like the SOS 360 Degree Partner Program, are well-poised to take advantage of this move to the cloud. MSPs are in a position to create complete disaster recovery plans, which include regular maintenance and automatically scheduled back ups. It is cost efficient for the SMB to outsource this work to a managed service provider that isn’t on staff, but is well-trained in data backup and disaster recovery.

Automatic backup is key

The Forrester Research report also highlights the fact that automatic backup is extremely important to cloud backup plans. Humans are inherently forgetful and bad at remembering to do backups at a specific time. It’s always best to employ backup software, like SOS Online Backup, that allows IT managers and MSPs to schedule backups hourly, daily, and weekly.

Learn more about SOS Online Backup’s server backup solution and reseller program by clicking on the links below.

SOS ServerSave is total cloud backup solution for business. This software suite includes:

• Exchange backup and granular recovery
• Bare metal backup for servers
• Cloud Backup for SQL servers, SharePoint servers, Windows servers, and fileservers
• Laptop fleet backup
• Simple backup and recovery from the cloud

Click here to learn more about SOS ServerSave.

The SOS 360 Degree Partner Program for MSPs offers a complete business in a box for partner resellers.  The program includes:

• Option to sell SOS ServerSave and/or SOS Online Backup for files and folders
• Customized website template with integrated merchant account
• Re-branded software
• Re-brandable sales and marketing materials
• Partner Resource Center
• Live Trainings

Click here to explore the SOS 360 Degree Partner Program.