Backing up to the Cloud

Arthur Cole spoke with Dave Wright, founder/CEO, Jungle Disk.

Cole: The cloud has emerged as a convenient means to scale up storage, and more firms are considering the backup and recovery possibilities. What are some of the key requirements for cloud-based B&R?

Wright: Top on almost every company's mind is security. How can you make sure that your private company data is protected? Jungle Disk encrypts all data before it leaves the customer's computer using a key that is known only to the customer. The data stays encrypted while stored and is only decrypted after being restored by the customer. Other online storage solutions leave the encryption keys in the hands of the provider, which means you need to trust them for your security.

Reliability and availability are also important, of course. Jungle Disk products give customers the option of choosing between Rackspace or Amazon cloud storage, or even using both. Those two companies are the leaders in cloud storage and are well known for their reliability. Finally, you want to make sure the backup solution was designed for online backup, not simply local backup software that copies your data to the cloud. The Jungle Disk software is optimized for online backup with deduplication and compression features designed around how cloud storage works to minimize bandwidth requirements and backup time.

Cole: With cloud resources virtually unlimited in terms of scale, isn't the need for data reduction tools like deduplication and compression diminished?

Wright: Only if you don't care about cost and backup time. Although cloud storage is unlimited, you pay for what you use - so the less you use, the less you pay. Also, backup time is directly proportional to the size of your backup, so compression and deduplication allow you to back up significantly faster and use less bandwidth. The compression and deduplication features in Jungle Disk Server Edition typically save customers 80 to 90 percent in storage and bandwidth costs.

Cole: Server Edition works with the Rackspace and Amazon S3 cloud services. With many enterprises expressing concern about provider lock-in, are there plans to extend support to more providers?

Wright: One of the great things about Jungle Disk is that our software was designed from the start to support multiple cloud storage providers. We support the two leaders in this space right now, and will certainly consider others if there is market demand and competitive pricing. With other online backup software, you don't have a choice, which does tend to lock you in and limit the opportunity for competition to bring down prices over time.