Numerous IT service providers have invested in the computer backup market, and offer solutions adapted to companies that involve the installation of backup software on workstations, whose role is to send a copy of digital documents to the company’s internal network or to remote servers via the Internet
bakup software: are the “free” offers suitable for companies?
The majority of backup software providers offer free offers for individuals and associations that can also be suitable for freelancers. These formulas only allow to store a few gigabytes (GB) of data, and impose a maximum size per file. Moreover, they are limited to a single operating system or to a few workstations.
If your company employs more than a dozen employees or manages large amounts of data, this free version will soon prove insufficient. In this case, you have no other choice than to opt for the version “company” or “professional” paying software backup which does not suffer from these limitations. The support of specific applications or databases is rarely done with the basic backup software, but rather through additional plug-ins allowing compatibility with the services you use in your company: SQL Server, Oracle, Novell, VMWare, etc.
How much does it cost to buy or subscribe to a backup software ?
- If your company chooses to backup files on its internal servers the backup software will be available for a small fee through a final purchase whose selling price is included between 50 and 200 $ per user depending on the options chosen knowing that the tariffs are degressive depending on the number of licenses purchased. As a rule, regular updates of the backup software are also charged.
- If you opt for an online backup on remote servers for a “cloud storage”, the cost of the monthly or annual subscription of the backup software will obviously be higher since the provider will ensure the storage, security and availability of your data for you. Among the large actors of this market, the professional offers are generally included between 10 and 20 $ per month and per user.
It is important to remember that the cost of cloud storage is falling very fast from year to year, a consequence of the famous “Moore’s Law” which causes an increase in capacity for the same price, and therefore a decrease in the price per GB of stored data. This phenomenon is all the more visible with the large companies in the sector (Amazon Web Services, Google Drive for Work, Microsoft’s One Drive, or Dropbox) which have considerably reduced their prices in a few years.
In addition, some providers offer companies a free trial period (which never lasts more than a few weeks) during which you have the opportunity to test the backup software on a few workstations and determine the quality and reliability of the service.