HP taps Symantec cloud backup

HP is distributing Symantec's cloud backup software on its consumer PCs and notebooks, which also include a 60-day version of Norton Security.

Customers will get a 30-day trial of Norton Online Backup. The software is pre-installed, and the offer includes 5GB of cloud storage.

HP recently shut down its own Upline cloud backup service.

Symantec says it has more than eight million customers for its cloud backup service and experiences three million backups per day. Backups can be run automatically or on user-defined schedules. The data is encrypted, and compressed and block-level incremental backups help to reduce the amount of bytes sent over the network link.

Uploaded files can be accessed anytime and anywhere through a website, and backups can be performed for up to five PCs through a central account.

EMC's Decho operation has its own Mozy cloud backup service. It says Mozy has more than 30,000 business customers and more than 1 million users who, collectively, back up more than 15 petabytes of data to Decho's data centers. That puts it some way behind Symantec.

Carbonite is another well-known cloud backup service. It says it has backed up more than 25 billion files, and it backs up more than 100 million new ones every day. That could place it ahead of Symantec. In March it announced its software was bundled with certain Acer PCs and laptops in the USA and Canada in 30-day trial form. It had previously announced partnerships with La Cie and Lenovo. LaCie has announced it is merging with the Swiss Caleido company to gain its own cloud backup facility.

Spare Backup is a fourth consumer cloud backup provider. The company has a deal with Dixons Stores Group International (DSGI) to offer subscription service in PC World stores throughout the UK and in its Curry's stores. It is developing a Spare Room photo service to provide cloud photo storage with facilities for editing and sharing on sites such as Facebook.

Spare Backup sees total subscriptions for the second quarter of 2009 ranging between $1.3 and $1.6 million. ®