The HOW, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE and WHY of Building Your Own Cloud Backup Business Kevin Allan

Transcription

1 The HOW, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE and WHY of Building Your Own Cloud Backup Business Kevin Allan

2 A bit about me Engineering degree but never used it IT Consulting for SMEs CIAOPS interview

3 A bit about Corporate Backup Saw the need to help SMEs that needed to have their data protected Started as a program I wrote in less than a day Served only businesses inside the Joondalup Business Centre Best Young Business 2007 Business Innovation

4 Backing up End Users IT Consultant / Company didn t like the idea we were looking after their backup They could provide tape solution or external hard drive rotation They were right we were taking money they could ve been earning We changed the business model to help All we do is help people build their business

5 WHY? Why build a Cloud Backup Business?

6 Why? Money Passive More comprehensive IT service for your clients Not doing their IT? Your backup clients will come to you for IT support Easy entry into Cloud Mature Products

7 Why Else? Be a hero! After a fire/theft/hardware problem you re the one that keeps their business alive

8 WHAT? What type of Cloud Backup Business do you want?

9 1. Resell another service Easy / Don t want the hassle but What happens at restore time can you get hold of the backup provider? Download files quickly? Small % commission No word of mouth referrals Promoting someone else s brand

10 2. Run your own system Determine your own pricing Promoting your own brand Flexibility and control but Requires servers and maintenance Redundancy? DC rack space + power + traffic Software Large up-front costs

11 3. Wholesale Backup White labelled Maintenance covered No huge upfront costs Concentrate on building the business but Find out their redundancies DC location! How fast is it?

12 3b. More but s How easy is it to use / setup? What platforms does it run on? Will it backup servers? How customisable is it? Ability to limit number of threads / transfer speed / multiple schedules? How much / licensing?

13 Choosing the right partner Backup Provider #1 Backups stop when reaching Quota, if alerts aren t setup then go unnoticed Stats from Q showed support failed to close more than half restore-related support tickets Exchange backup failure causing every 2 nd generation of backup to resend full data set Co-brand only 30-day retention policy only

14 Choosing the right partner Backup Provider #2 6-7 weeks for rebrand (not core business) Full re-upload every 100 generations Lose your encryption key, lose your data Must call Provider so they can run compression script

15 Choosing the right partner Backup Provider #3 No client side compression and deduplication No Australian phone support Can t backup servers

16 Choosing the right partner Backup Provider #4 couple of thousand $ for restore Do your research!

17 How we compare Large blocks of backup space Fully Rebranded Unlimited client licenses Sell as your own product/service No competition between us and their clients (not retail) Help build your business

18 What software features do you need?

19 De-duplication Process of eliminating duplicate blocks of data whilst still having enough redundancy for a top-level DR plan De-dupe on similar files De-dupe across your users Want client-side de-dupe

20 Traditional Incremental Full backup plus 1 or more inc or diff Restoring requires every single file to be in tact Can be time consuming

21 Block-level Backups SQL DB runs on the back end Backups break all files down into blocks and only transfer the changed On Restore the SQL DB calculates which blocks make up the backup set

22 Hybrid Backups Offsite and Onsite backup Local copy sits encrypted

23 Exchange Database Backup EDB for Full, Log for Inc Brick-level Backup Convert to PST before backup Can t take Exchange offline

24 SQL Connect to different servers and instances Can t take SQL offline

25 Mac More and more mainstream Back them up with the same software system

26 What service features do you need?

27 Getting data to/from servers Initial seed is very important to keep your bigger clients happy Upload 2TB over ADSL? Restore 2TB over ADSL? Backup is only as good as the restore

28 White labelling The importance of pushing your own brand and flow on business How far is it white labelled? URL? DNS? Who does the work?

29 Rebranding Software Example

30 Rebranding Web Example

31 HOW? How do you build a Cloud Backup Business?

32 Building the business Good Product Good Support Sales and Marketing

33 Get a website People can find you 24/7 Buy directly from your site Blog SEO (use your area to set yourself apart) Call to action

34 Marketing Yes, this works! (We use Mailchimp) Auto responders Track clicks and target Contact, sell, they want it anyway Call to action

35 Twitter Talk in real time to your prospects Establish yourself as an expert Tweetadder Tweet Search Auto replies direct to your site

36 LinkedIn and Facebook Get Recommendations Start a Business page Comment in forums Business as a person will show up in People you may know Link them all together- Website, Blog, Twitter, etc

37 Strategic Partnerships Local Business organisations Freebie in exchange for tag in their footer LOTS of different areas to target

38 Business Networking Meet people and socialise People like buying from someone they like But this IS business so make sure you focus on closing deals!

39 WHERE? Where should you start your Cloud Backup Business?

40 Unsure? Start Local Local website with SEO People like dealing with local so they can get hold of you

41 OBJECTIONS How do I get past my clients objections?

42 What about cheap alternatives? Unlimited backups for $5/month Fair Use Policy Bandwidth throttling (25-50MB per 12 hours) Size limit on individual files Big players done all the marketing and awareness for you Backup Features Exchange / SQL Speed incl ability to seed and provide restore Keeping data in Australia? Medical, Legal, Financial

43 When cheap is not so cheap Low cost per GB But paying for PUT, COPY, GET, POST, LIST Traffic Hard drive seeding

44 Clients cant afford NOT to have Offsite Backup Cost of in house backups Time consuming ($38/week) Hardware purchase Cost of downtime Offline while rebuilding server, AD, Exchange, shares ($$thousands) Benefits of Offsite Backup Automated, no hardware costs

45 What should you charge? What will the market pay? What will it cost you? What is your profit?

46 Case Study #1 Small IT Consultant 991GB Client Data in total 14 clients Charging ~$89 per month each = $1246 per month income Block costs $295 Total Profit = $11,412 per year

47 Case Study #2 IT Company (~30 staff) 5TB Client Data in total 15 clients Charging ~$550 per month each = $8250 per month income Block costs $845 Total Profit = $88,860 per year

48 WHEN? When is a good time to start a Cloud Backup Business?

49 Now! Cloud is upon us Backup is a very easy entry point Products are mature High demand

50 Corporate Backup Cloud Backup Business Builders Kevin Allan