EMC Embraces SMBs at EMC World

Every year, EMC, one of the world's leading manufacturers of software and hardware systems for information management and storage, hosts its EMC World conference in Las Vegas. This year, more than 9,000 people gathered for a series of keynote addresses, 500 sessions and product demonstrations in the storage, security and virtualization categories.

Specific to small businesses, the company promoted new backup software, disk drive systems and the glories of simplifying your backup by moving it all online. I braved the storage hoards at the conference to take a look at what the EMC has in mind for serving the small business market.

Listening to EMC talk about the SMB market feels a bit schizophrenic. On the one hand, you interview someone who discusses unlimited online backup for less than $5 a month. But the next speaker explains how EMC’s small business disk systems come with a price tag of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“Our DL3D 1500 disk system is great for SMB and costs $115,000,” said Dave Donatelli, the head of EMC’s storage division.

This apparent dichotomy is due to the culture and history of the company. Five years back, EMC was all about high-end storage systems. Since then, it has embarked upon a journey of acquisition to broaden its appeal beyond storage hardware. Over the past year it bought Mozy.com -- an online storage company – and those guys live and breathe small business.

Stretching Out

With new owners come new challenges, and EMC plans to stretch Mozy.com from the lower end of the market up into the enterprise space.

“Before joining EMC, our idea was to gain an enterprise customer or two every year,” said Vance Checketts, chief operating officer of Mozy. “EMC’s idea is to stretch us so that we gain one or two of those large customers every week.’

While Mozy's corporate customers include General Electric, the consumer, home office and small business markets remain its bread and butter. According to Checketts, the fastest growing segment at Mozy is small business.

The online backup provider just released Mozy for the Mac. Like its previous Windows-only version, it is an online backup service. You set a backup schedule, and your new files or changed files are uploaded each day and available for rapid restore.

Mozy offers three levels of service:

MozyHome – designed consumer computers, but it would also be the right choice for a small business with a handful of employees. It includes up to 2 GB of online backup for free, otherwise, it is $4.95 a month for an unlimited amount per laptop or desktop.

MozyPro – Accommodates up to 250 or so people. It costs $3.95 per month per person plus 50 cents per gigabyte. You can also license it for a central file server at $6.95 per month and $1.75 per GB. Depending on your company's circumstance, it could be better to buy Mozy Pro per-desktop and in other cases, it would be cheaper to license server-based backup.

MozyEnterprise – You can choose this option if/when your SMB is large enough to have its own dedicated IT staff to look after desktop support. It costs $5.25/mo. per desktop/laptop plus $0.70/mo. per gigabyte and $9.25/mo. per supported Windows server plus $2.35/mo. per gigabyte.