EMC To Make The Most Out Of Mozy

EMC's $76 million acquisition Thursday of online subscription storage backup-as-a-service high flyer Berkeley Data Systems is going to result in a big kick in the pants to Berkeley's white box branding solution provider initiative and faster development of its yet to be released new Mozy Backup Retention service.

The Utah-based Berkeley, widely recognized as one of the premier storage backup services for consumers and small and medium businesses, is celebrating a deal that it hopes will help accelerate its bid for what Mozy Chief Operating Officer Vance Checketts calls "world domination" of the online storage backup market from consumers to big businesses.

Checketts, who will now oversee day-to-day operations of the EMC Berkeley subsidiary as director of business operations, said he is looking forward to an aggressive ramp of the Mozy solution provider program which already includes 1,500 solution providers that are being paid recurring revenue fees.

"It is really simple from our perspective we just want to dominate the world," says Checketts. "When we tell that to EMC and they ask us to quantify it, it is a little bit difficult. They are talking about hard numbers and we are still trying to quantify and find out what world domination means. I don't have specific numbers, but we are being very, very aggressive."

Aggressive indeed. Mozy has already been recognized with a accolades from the likes of Consumer Reports, Time Magazine and the Wall Street Journal's technical guru Walt Mossberg. Now the company, which has also nailed a high profile corporate deal with General Electric, is poised to make an all out assault on the corporate storage-as-a-service market with a white box branding program that allows solution providers to private label the Mozy product set with their own brand, said Checketts. "Our ability to ramp up and give our solution providers a library of resources they can draw from will really increase with the EMC acquisition," he said. "For much larger organizations like systems integrators and big service providers like ISPs and MSPs there is certainly going to be an opportunity to not just resell, but to white brand their own (Mozy) offering and resell it."

"That is a huge boost," said David O'Connell, owner of O'Connell I.T., a Lindenhurst, NY Mozy backup storage service provider of the white brand initiative. "That is something we have been waiting for for the last six months. If the EMC deal can speed up the white box product to market it'll be an absolute success for Mozy."

O'Connell, who has been reselling the Mozy service for a year, is one of the Mozy VARs that has made hay with the online backup service. "Every aspect of online storage backup, including data retention, is growing exponentially," he said. "In terms of reselling for us what that means is we have sold 200 percent more than we expected in our first year."

NEXT: What Separates Mozy From The Competition

What separates Mozy from online backup storage competitors, like Data Deposit Box and Carbonite, is the quality of the product and the attractive business opportunity for VARs, said O'Connell. Other major players that have jumped into the online backup market include hard drive vendor Seagate, which acquired online backup developer EVault last year, along with Hewlett Packard, Dell, Iomega and Symantec.

"I have complete confidence in the (Mozy) product," O'Connell said. "With data recovery and data restore, you have to have complete faith in the product. The product is beyond compare. It's fantastic. We spent eight years looking for a product that would do what Mozy does that we could resell to our clients."

O'Connell said he already rolled Mozy out to 60 percent of his clients and expects to oversee 1,000 licenses within the next three years. He said he expect Mozy to account for 30 percent of his revenue within two years.

Berkeley is also going to speed up development of its Mozy Backup Retention service, a business class offering aimed at helping businesses meet government regulatory requirements including email archiving. That service is not set to be deliverered until 2008, but development will be accelerated with EMC's support, said Checketts.

One key executive that will be leading that online storage backup as a service charge will be Berkeley founder, CEO and now multimillionaire Josh Coates, who will become chief technology officer (CTO) of Berkeley.

The biggest boost from the EMC deal, however, may be the storage kingpin's deep pockets and credibility as Berkeley moves to capture a lion's share of the exploding online storage as a backup service market. "From a credibility perspective this is huge," said Checketts. "The exciting thing for our resellers and other partners is now they can say here is this awesome, exciting new technology and guess what? It's backed by EMC, the leader in enterprise information storage. If you had any concerns whatsoever about our ability and commitment to the technology, those should be completely mitigated. Now you don't have to just trust us. You have the backing of EMC!"

O'Connell, for his part, said questions about Berekely's staying power has been the one strike against the Mozy service. "To have the EMC imprimature is huge," he said. "I would have expected them to go for an IPO to get additional resources. Now with a private sale to EMC they basically have unlimited resources. It basically guarantees Mozy is going to be around."

Checketts said the deal is a signal for solution providers that have not yet hopped on the online storage backup-as-a-service train to get onboard. "The train has left the station and it is moving fast, but not so fast that you can't hop on," he said. "The traditional storage and backup systems market is growing at a steady high single digit, low double digit rate on a year over year basis. But the online services are growing in triple digits. Our business shows that. Our partners can take advantage of that by becoming a reseller. They can offer fast growing, very compelling solution to their customers without having to pay $76 million."

O'Connell certainly sees a fast growth opportunity by selling Mozy. "Every day since we began rolling Mozy out we've been celebrating," he said. "This is just the icing on the cake. It gives Mozy an excellent future."