When people think of cloud storage, one of the first applications to come to mind is backup, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. Advertisements for cloud backup services are ubiquitous on TV and radio, and providers of such software have experienced rapid growth. Mozy got off to a very early start with an IPO in 2004, followed by acquisition by EMC in 2007. Carbonite went public in 2011. Besides, tape backup is difficult to manage and costly to maintain, and cloud backup and disaster recovery (DR) represents a low-risk way to experiment with cloud services. Every dollar saved by moving backup to the cloud is a dollar IT can spend on new technologies and business transformation, a very appealing tradeoff for any CIO.
