Zmanda Targets Cloud Backup Toward Asia And SMBs

Zmanda has enhanced its open source Zmanda Cloud Backup 3.0 product to make it more attractive to companies with a presence in Asia. The new version is specifically intended for SMBs, as well as for departments of larger companies. In addition, the new version of the software has been optimized to back up Microsoft Exchange more efficiently. New features include backup support for Asia, whereas previous versions provided backup support for the U.S. and Europe. This is important not only for Asian users, but also for disaster recovery purposes, where users might want to back up data in a country like Singapore, which has stable geography and is well-connected. Consequently, the software supports international character sets, meaning file names can be in languages such as Japanese and Korean.  

The software has been optimized for Microsoft Exchange, because it and Microsoft SQL Server are the most common applications users back up. Optimization features include the ability to recover Microsoft Exchange to a recovery database, where users can select messages and mailboxes to recover. Previously, users would have had to recover the entire backup in place. Zmanda is looking at supporting similar table-level backup and recovery for SQL Server, as well as optimization for applications such as Oracle and Microsoft Sharepoint. Users can also choose how much bandwidth Zmanda uses to back up while they're doing other work.

Zmanda has the best combination of scalability, reporting, insight and traditional data center backup, says Martin Dunsby, CEO of Hybridge IT Inc., a Menlo Park, Calif., IT department for small businesses. Because many of his clients are in private equity finance and do a lot of work in Asia, Dunsby likes the features that make it easier to use, such as support for Asian-character file names.

He also says he likes the new ability to pick where the backup goes, because for international clients, it's important to know when financial data crosses country boundaries. That feature is useful for disaster recovery, particularly since he is in California.  "Knowing where the data is and making sure it's not in California is a very important feature," Dunsby says. "If you're doing it for disaster recovery, having it ten miles down the street isn't going to help."

The software is available now for a rate of $0.15/gigabyte/month no matter which continent you're on. This is a reduction from the previous price of $0.20/gigabyte/month in the U.S. and $0.25/gigabyte/month in Europe. In addition, there is a setup cost of $4.95 per account.