|
 The SOS Online Backup Service
Recovering Files
Privacy and Security
The Online Recovery & File Sharing Interface
The SOS Refer A Friend Promotion
Why the Software Was Built
Existing Backup Solutions Require Software AND Expensive Hardware
Pure-Software Online Backup
The SOS Online Backup Service
Never lose another document again. Ever. SOS Online Backup ushers in a new age in data protection and file recovery. You can rest assured - knowing that even if the worst were to occur - the lifeblood of your business, your data, is Safe OffSite.
The SOS service provides data-protection for customers, whether they are SMEs, SOHOs, professionals at home, students, or anyone with electronic files to be protected from data-loss. SOS brings big-business IT-best-practice to small businesses and consumers.
Data will be safe – Safe OffSite.
The SOS service is delivered through a software program (the SOS Windows Client) installed on the end-user’s computer. The user then tells the program what files to protect, and each night, at a configured time, (or instantaneously at the option of the user) SOS backs up any files that have changed since the previous backup. Files are backed up to a global network of SOS datacenters powered by the proprietary SOS Server and InfiniScaleTM technologies. Data is compressed using proprietary SOS ShrinkRAPTM delta compression that ensures that only the changes made to files are sent over the network – dramatically reducing bandwidth consumption. It is this performance enhancement that forms the core of the SOS Designed-For-Dial-Up strategy, and gives our platform mass market appeal.
This stands in contrast to most online backup systems, which re-transfer the entire file that has changed – rather than just the modified binary subset of that file.
SOS can also be set up to intelligently watch particular folders – and to either backup all the files in that folder – or just a subset of them. For example – you can easily define a filter that says – “only backup the word documents in My Documents folder”. Simple – but powerful.
TOP
Recovering Files
When trouble comes, be it a virus, a failed hard-disk, or a stolen computer, SOS is there to save the customer. The end-user simply clicks the “Recover” console within the SOS program, enters the username and password, selects the file(s) to recover, and clicks “restore file(s)”. The SOS system also keeps an archive of every daily version of the file, so if you want to get a previous version of a document, say… as it was last Tuesday, SOS can do that too. This stands in contrast to most online backup systems, where daily versions are not kept.
Figure 2:The SOS Recovery interface – showing multiple versions for a particular file – and the powerful search interface that allows you to narrow down the file-set from which to recover your files.
TOP
Privacy and Security
The SOS system ensures complete privacy protection. SOS UltraSafeTM security uses a three-tiered encryption system which encrypts data on the user’s computer, again in transit, and finally when at rest in storage. SOS UltraSafeTM means that the user’s decryption password is not stored in our systems so that not even the SOS programmers can view the data stored on the SOS servers. Only the user who put it there can ever access the data. This stands in contrast to most other online backup systems, where data is neither encrypted on your client, nor stored as encrypted data so as to prevent employees of the software vendor from accessing stored data.
TOP
The Online Recovery & File Sharing Interface
SOS not only provides you with an automatic, secure and safe backup system – but it also provides you with global roaming access to all of your files. Anywhere in the world – using just a web browser – you can go to www.sosbackup.com and have immediate access to all the computers, folders, files and versions that you have backed up with your SOS Backup User Account.
On top of this functionality – the ORI allows users to share files with anyone who has an email address. With just two clicks – you can specify that a file should be accessible by a friend, family member, colleague, or whomever you please. Want to share photos online with friends? Use SOS to share them! Sick of having large attachments rejected by your email server? Use SOS to share it!
Many of our customers find this feature as useful as the core backup functionality. SOS is not just for online backup, it is also a file management and file sharing system.
Figure 3:The SOS Online Recovery & File Sharing system allows you to access your files anywhere in the world – and to share them with anyone with an email address.
TOP
The SOS Refer A Friend Promotion
As part of the SOS SoSimple interface – SOS users have the option to Refer a Friend to the SOS system. This is part of Safe OffSite’s drive to build SOS into the biggest and best online backup and file-sharing network in the world. The idea is simple – we want to reward our users for telling their friends about SOS. We know they’re going to anyway – but we’d like to give something back. So – the “Three Means Free” promotion will be run throughout 2006 – and if an SOS user refers 3 friends to SOS who become active subscribers – they’ll get their SOS account for free! We hope to drive organic growth of the SOS system – so that everyone has the security and peace of mind of knowing that SOS has got them covered.
TOP
Why the Software Was Built
Whereas 90% of small businesses say that they intend to backup daily, fewer than 40% of small businesses actually do backup daily. Whereas 91% of consumers say they intend to backup daily, less than 10% of consumers do backup daily. The problem? Existing backup solutions require too much effort to use – and cost too much to install. If you're working 12 hours a day - its costing you money to backup. You take 10 minutes a day to perform traditional backup - and thats time away from selling, from doing inventory, from drafting - or whatever it is you do. Its costing you $20 or $30 or in some cases more per week in time to use your traditional backup system. And that backup system probably isn't that reliable.
Let us do it for you for less than $1 a week.
Extensive market research shows overwhelming interest from SMEs in an automatic software service that will securely backup files each day to a safe offsite location without any user interaction required – i.e. exactly what SOS Online Backup offers. SMEs overwhelmingly cost out their current backup technique as costing them more than $10 per week. With 49% of SMEs willing to pay for a secure online backup service, and on average being willing to pay more than $10 per week – SOS Online Backup is an excellent value proposition for SMEs.
SOS is better quality of backup service - for a cheaper price. It brings Big-Business IT best-practice to the little guys.
TOP
Existing Backup Solutions Require Software AND Expensive Hardware
Traditional backup solutions (as provided by industry giants Veritas and Legato) are often built around backing up data to tape – and/or to other more advanced storage (such as SANs or NAS storage). Thus – serious backup has always been a joint hardware/software proposal – and hefty price tags associated with the required hardware has generally meant that the SME/SOHO and consumer markets have never adopted a standard for data backup. The market is fractured – some SMEs use CDs, some use USB drives, some use tape drives – and alarmingly, many use nothing. None of these systems are satisfactory - given that the one thing that can put most SMEs out of business overnight is data loss - loss of inventory records, financial records, sales records, etc.
TOP
Pure-Software Online Backup
With the dramatic breakthroughs in storage technology over recent years, and the collapse of bandwidth prices, it has become economically viable to offer backup over the internet. Now the consumer/SME can outsource the procurement and maintenance of backup hardware – and just install a backup software agent - the SOS Windows Client.
Because SOS Online Backup requires no up-front capital expenditure by the end-user, the service is very appealing to consumers and SMEs who have previously not been willing to pay the cost associated with advanced backup systems (eg. ~ $2,000 for a decent tape backup system).
SOS Online Backup provides a cost effective, simple, and automated solution to the backup problem faced by many millions of consumers and SMEs around the world.
TOP
|
