EMC Unveils Its First SAAS Offering

The recently acquired MozyEnterprise online storage service will use a new delivery platform called EMC Fortress.

EMC is unveiling a new software-as-a-service strategy and releasing its first offering using it.

MozyEnterprise, rolled out Jan. 22, is an online storage service for desktops, laptops and remote Windows servers that EMC bought last year in its $150 million acquisition of Berkeley Data Systems.

EMC also announced that all of its forthcoming SAAS products and services-starting with MozyEnterprise-will be based on a new delivery platform called EMC Fortress, EMC SAAS Division General Manager Roy Sanford told eWEEK.

EMC Fortress is a secure, multitenant, scalable SAAS architecture that provides customers with centralized billing, management and metering, Sanford said.

MozyEnterprise automates secure online backup and recovery over the Internet for off-site data protection for remote desktops, laptops and branch office servers.

EMC's SAAS strategy calls for the delivery of additional IT-based SAAS applications built on the EMC Fortress platform over time and in key areas such as trusted data services, Sanford said.

MozyEnterprise is available now in North America directly from EMC and through its reseller partners.  The company plans to offer MozyEnterprise to customers outside of North America later this year, Sanford said.

MozyEnterprise requires no minimum contract and imposes no fees for early service cancellation. Monthly subscription list prices are $5.25 per month per PC, plus $0.70 per month per gigabyte protected; for Windows Server, prices are $9.25 per month per supported Windows server, plus $2.35 per month per gigabyte protected.

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Henry Baltazar, an analyst with The 451 Group, told eWEEK that signs are clearly pointing toward online storage becoming a more strategic tool in enterprise IT.

"The acquisitions made by major vendors such as Seagate [Evault], IBM [Arsenal Digital Solutions] and EMC [Mozy] clearly show that SAAS will indeed be an important part of the storage and general IT landscape," Baltazar said.

"So far, we have only seen a limited amount of success in the online backup space, primarily with SMEs [small and midsize enterprises] and consumers. We expect to see initial traction in the enterprise remote office market and eventually in the archive and content management space."

MozyPro has about 500,000 business and consumer users, including some 300,000 corporate users at General Electric. Pariveda, NTG Systems, Vanderbilt University and Free The Children are other Mozy customers.

EMC also announced several new reseller agreements with business partners to offer MozyEnterprise online backup services to their customers. The company also is expanding its relationship with Verizon Business to offer the new set of SAAS capabilities, Sanford said.