Great post over at TechRepublic on 10 things to look for in an offsite backup provider. Their list is:
- Reliable software
- Storage plans that meet your needs
- Stellar reporting tools
- An approachable backup application
- Simple recovery
- Secure file transfer
- 24/7 support
- Free trials
- Version tracking
- E-mail alerts
Commenter JohnCameron3, an IT Consultant from Idaho, adds recovery time to the list:
Another thing to keep in mind is the time it takes to get all of your data back. It could take many hours to restore all of your files. Are you willing to be without your data for that long, especially in a business environment?
Downloading a couple of GBs of data won’t take too long, but what if you have 100′s of GB of data? Your backup provider should offer data delivery via USB drive or DVD (Backblaze and Mozy both offer this service).
Another common request in a backup provider is support for multiple platforms. If you’re an IT worker in charge of backups, I can see where this is a valid concern. However, for most home users, they’re only concerned with backing up whatever type of system they’re using (Mac or Windows).
Some of these items can be easily added to any provider’s service (such as E-mail alerts) while others require quite a bit of overhead and work (ex: 24/7 support).
So what are you looking for in an online backup provider?
