A review of the competitive landscape for online backup and storage continues to reveal the 'wild west' atmosphere first mentioned by IDC over a year ago. In this atmosphere, there is a misconception that 1 GB on your hard drive is the same as 1 GB stored with an online backup and storage solution. The correct answer to that misconception is. "it depends on the solution."
Some online backup solution providers boast that they will store a GB of data for as little as $0.50/GB or less. In this case, the amount of data is calculated based on the native data size on your computer or server. Fair enough.
What is not commonly known is that professional online backup and storage companies use technology to reduce the size of the data they actually have to store. The data size can be reduced in several ways, the most common being compression and de-duplication.
The Benefits of Compresson
For common Microsoft Office files the compression can average 50% or more. For some database files the compression can reach 80% of the native file size. A compressed file will backup more quickly and take up less storage space. A business paying for data by the GB benefit by using a solution that compresses that data first.
The Benefits of De-Duplication
Many offices store redundant files on the server or among various computers. Organizations that bakcup up multiple computers may see a huge benefit to deduplication. Operating systems, programs, other common files take time and power to send to remote locations for backup and storage. Through de-duplication the total data transfered and stored is reduced, often dramatically. Therefore the cost to store that data is reduced.
Click here for a demonstration of the effect of de-duplication on data storage.
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