EMC Extends Mozy Online Storage to Macs

By
Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service
May 1, 2008, 10:59 PM ET
3 min read

— -- The MozyHome online backup service became generally available on Thursday after a long beta test and the acquisition of its creator by EMC.

MozyHome lets consumers back up the data on their desktops and laptops to a remote data center, then recover it later if their systems crash. EMC took over the service when it bought Berkeley Data Systems last October. The company, in Salt Lake City, is now called Mozy and is part of EMC's Cloud Infrastructure and Services Division.

MozyHome is already commercially available for PCs. Berkeley introduced a Mac version last April that had remained in beta since then, though both Berkeley and Mozy charged US$4.95 per month for unlimited storage with the service.

Mozy claims MozyHome for Mac is the only unlimited online backup service for Macs. It's part of parent EMC's move into the consumer space with a variety of storage options. Last month EMC agreed to buy consumer and small-business drive maker Iomega for $213 million.

Though PC users have had many options for online backup, Mac users have been left behind. Carbonite says it will have a Mac version of its system in the middle of this year, and Itronis Technologies says on its Web site that it will extend its eSureIT backup service to Macs and Linux computers, but gives no date.

With MozyHome, users can upload as much as 2G bytes of any type of content for free, with no expiration date, according to EMC. For unlimited capacity, the service still costs $4.95 per month. MozyHome encrypts the files with 448-bit Blowfish encryption and transfers them via a 128-bit SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) connection.

After files are first uploaded, MozyHome does incremental backups of changes made since the last upload, which takes less time, the company said. It can carry out new backups at scheduled times. In addition to the most recent backup, the service keeps 30 days' worth of older versions of files. To recover the data, users can download it from the Mozy Web site, use the Mozy client software or order a set of DVDs from Mozy.

Later this year, Mozy will extend Mac support to MozyPro and MozyEnterprise, which are backup services designed for businesses, the company said.

Mozy claims more than 700,000 users worldwide, including 20,000 businesses. It is backing up more than 7.5 petabytes of data across multiple data centers, the company said. More than 43,000 people participated in the Mac beta test, according to Mozy.