Verizon expands data backup to include PCs

Verizon Business today announced that its suite of managed services, Verizon Remote Backup and Restore, will now include PCs as well as servers and will be available globally -- initially in the European/Middle East/African market and coming soon to Asia/Pacific.

The Verizon Remote Backup and Restore service enables enterprises to replace the tape systems many use today to back up their data and applications to protect against computer network failures. By providing an automatic, network-based backup system, Verizon simplifies the process of keeping data backups up-to-date while alleviating the burden on corporate networks, said Anthony Kessel, senior product manager, IT Solutions.

"We take a daily backup of customers' servers and PCs and transmit that information securely to the Verizon Data Center protected bunker," Kessel said. "It's a full backup of everything that has changed. Our customers can do restores from full backups with no more incremental adding of tapes. They go to a secure Website and see a calendar that shows all the days for which backups were made and can drill down through the menu to what they want and simply point and click to download it."

This kind of service makes sense for network service providers because they already have the networks and data centers, said Counse Broders, analyst with Current Analysis.

"It's a culmination of elements – it's natural to the network, natural for the data centers and, with the stick that regulatory is providing, pushing companies to do backups for compliance, this is certainly a nice plus," Broders said. Verizon Business is ahead of the curve, having launched its initial backup service in 2006, he noted. "It makes sense to expand it to PCs and to expand it globally."

The Verizon Remote Backup and Restore uses a technology called "de-duplication," which automatically identifies new data and only stores what's new or changed, reducing the network bandwidth and storage required to keep data up to date.