A familar problem for everyone. Is ther now a solution?Written by Chris Cameron
Lost & Found for 21st Century In today’s hectic world more and more people are turning to those handy gadgets and mobile products that can be taken with them anywhere they go. The more things consumers own, more they're prone to lose them. This in mind we actually went out and tested a new service on UK market from Want it Bak. Lets see what Londoners are really made of.We left a Palm m130 PDA on Jubilee Line of London Underground, a Sony Ericcson Mobile on number 15 bus route, a Blackberry “email on move” gizmo down in a local pub in South West London and a rucksack sitting in Starbucks Chancery Lane area. Lastly we left a digital camera sitting out in open in Hyde park. Not easiest thing leaving items lying about in this highly security conscious world we live in these days. Here in 21st century our lives have become more and more reliant on mobile items. As we go through our days, keeping a mental log of everything we have and where we have it becomes more and more difficult. It is inevitable that some things get lost. In fact as stated in a recent research “Around 62,000 mobile phones were left in London taxis during last six months. That's an average three phones per taxi, according to a survey of licensed London cabbies by Taxi Newspaper and Pointsec Mobile Technologies. Absent minded and drunken travellers also forgot 4,000 laptops and 5,000 PDA’s when exiting cabs”. So what can we do to have give us some reassurance that we have at least a chance of getting our valuable or even sentimental items back. In steps lost and found for 21st century in form of Want it Bak. The service is based around belief that most people are actually honest and will do right thing if a method is offered to them. This feel good factor is enhanced by added incentive of a reward for doing right thing. Anything you can imagine, mobile phones, keys, cameras, PDA’s, laptops, binoculars, backpacks, passports, briefcases, wallets and purses, golf clubs, power tools, textbooks, credit cards, cheque books... you get picture, it can all be protected using their simple system. How does Want it Bak work? Simple. You purchase a range of security tags each with their own unique id number. You register them with Want it Bak and that’s it. If you ever lose item and someone finds it they contact Want it Bak directly using their website or their 0800 number and they arrange a courier to pick it up and return it to owner for a small admin charge. One of best things about this service is confidential nature of it. The “Finder” never knows who owner is and vice versa. Reassuring for owners of expensive items, they can now safely retrieve their possessions. "It's a great incentive for people to do right thing", says Chris Cameron from Want it Bak, "Our research shows that most people are actually honest and biggest barrier they have to returning items is hassle of finding out who it belongs to, arranging delivery or pick up, getting time to drop item off at local police station. Now they don't have to do anything except ring us or visit our website, and they get a Reward for their troubles".
| | Remote Backup Service Providers: Clarifying the Value PropositionWritten by Tommy Gardner
Online Backup Service Providers: Clarifying Value Proposition White Paper presented by: REMOTE BACKUP SYSTEMS, INC. ONLINE BACKUP SOFTWARE www.remote-backup.com •Introduction •A Brief History of Backup Universe •...Who has my Data, and Where? •Customer Service in Online Backup, What does it mean? •Cost/Benefit Analysis – Don’t Believe Hype •Summary Copyright © 2004, Remote Backup Systems, Inc. Any reuse without expressed written permission of RBS is prohibited. Introduction Online Backup of computer data is finally gaining mainstream acceptance among business and consumer clients. Due primarily to pervasive nature of internet and widespread availability of broadband connectivity, online data backup is finally coming into its own. With this change from a technology once considered domain of only largest well-funded businesses to a high-profile, high-reliability service offering come many challenges for consumer. An historical look at data backup and management marketplace and technologies that helped shape it helps to make some sense of current trends in this business. In an effort to make use of their idle server farms, wholesale online ‘Data-Mart’ companies have begun advertising remote backup services at ultra low prices, attempting to capitalize on new-found popularity of service. Data Storage and Online Data Repository companies are also on every virtual corner, hawking wildly varied products that initially confuse even industry veterans. Many of these companies are actually in advertising sales business, and feature data backup as a sort of loss leader, hoping to attract visitors – and thereby advertisers, to their sites. The value of computer data is higher today than ever before, yet many online remote backup companies seem convinced that businesses are interested in a ‘lowest common denominator’ backup solution. Corners are being cut, misinformation rules, and marketing dollars are flying. In a forest-and-trees analogy, price wars are blinding corporate America to critical data management component they began looking for in first place – service. Following is an exploration of commercial computer data backup and storage market, historically and currently, within context of diverse service levels provided by different types of companies. A brief History of Remote Data Backup and Offsite Data Storage Universe In olden days - that is mid 1980’s - there simply wasn’t any commercially available Online Backup software. The small handfuls of people providing service were using a mix-and-match combination of communications, shareware, and other utilities not designed for remote data backup. In fact, there were no standard protocols at all for electronic communications or graphic user interface to computer programs. The microcomputer industry was in a great state of change and modems were still stalled at 1200 to 2400 baud, making transfers of large amounts of data excruciatingly slow (1 mb = 72 minutes!!). As technologies improved, so did possibilities and prospects for online data backup and management industry. As connectivity speeds increased, market for Online Backup services expanded... During time that faster modems and internet protocols were in development, tape backup systems gained in popularity. The mainstay of larger corporations since 1950’s, tape backup saw significant improvements with advent of 8mm and 4mm tape formats, achieving then-revolutionary local transfer speeds of 240 KB per second. Cottage industries sprung up as technology began to transform existing paper record storage businesses into larger tape transport and storage enterprises. Because of ongoing costs associated with moving these tapes around and relatively high failure rates of restoring data from tapes, companies began to research and develop ways to transfer data over telephone lines. Software costs were as high as $125,000 for first reliable product, and high-speed modems were still relatively scarce. The need for an affordable, reliable online backup system was becoming clear. In 1987 Remote Backup Systems, Inc.’s founder introduced first commercially available online backup system to a group of physicians in Memphis, TN. Originally designed for backing up medical records to a remote location, requirements were strict on features including encryption, compression, authentication, and other high security measures. As connectivity speeds increased, market for online backup services expanded. The advent of Cable and DSL modems offered an opportunity for average business to take advantage of latest in secure data transfer technology. During tech boom of 1990’s this service gained widespread acceptance among many industries, including small and medium sized organizations that began to rely more heavily on PCs for their businesses profitability. Now, as high-speed connectivity is becoming commonplace and general acceptance of secure data transfer increases, service is gaining mainstream popularity. Many IT firms are looking to add service offerings which provide a recurring revenue stream while requiring minimal resource dedication - and online backup is more attractive than ever. From dedicated remote backup service providers to ‘data management companies’ who are actually in advertising sales business, landscape of this industry is becoming more difficult to navigate every day. Reseller, Client and Server, or Data Repository – Who Has My Data, and Where? When a business decides to add Remote Backup to their data management plan, subsequent decision on which type of service to choose can be equally as critical. The data backup industry is perhaps most confusing market segment in all of digital data management, due largely to amount of marketing hype and misinformation in industry as well as sheer number of companies in this space. To cut through some of confusion and propaganda, it can safely be said that there are three main types of remote backup companies an organization can choose to do business with: •Backup Service Resellers – These companies act as middlemen, charging their clients for use of another company’s backup software, hardware, and support network. They may offer some education and assistance during sales and support process, and they may appear as a more secure option due to their affiliation with a larger company. Resellers usually have no physical responsibility or control over stored data, and may not even know where data physically rests at any given time. The ability to deliver data to a client organization is dictated primarily by hosting company, not sales organization, and details around this process are typically contained in sub-paragraphs of contract. These companies are also frequently in direct competition with their own suppliers, which can result in strained supply chain relations and hierarchal availability of services. •Online Data Storage /Data Repository Vendors – Like their names imply, data storage and repository companies rent space on their servers and allow clients to simply park data there. Users are typically required to manually log in to service, to configure repository to fit their needs, and to manually move data to vendor’s storage area. Usually deployed separately from an automated and secure data protection measure, data repositories can allow individuals or organizations to share data by uploading it to a third-party server or mailing disks in to be loaded by hosting company, enabling access by others on a password-protected basis. These offerings can run gamut from consumer photo-sharing applications to more sophisticated products which allow sharing and collaboration on projects, documents, and other data.
|