14 DAY TRIAL // On Wednesday, Lenovo announced that it would work with EMC to offer to small businesses an easy way to backup data, by providing unlimited Mozy storage service for Lenovo's SL-series laptops. To start with, buyers of small-business SL laptops will be offered the possibility to sign up to a service that will enable them to backup an unlimited amount of data. A regular Mozy Pro service requires subscribers to pay both per gigabyte and per user.
The Lenovo Online Data Backup, which provides unlimited storage space, costs $79.20 per year for a limited period of time, and has been made available only in English for a small number of countries, including U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Singapore. The regular price is set at $99 per year. Lenovo announced that it planned to expand the service to more countries, and that six other languages would also be added in the future.
The Lenovo service has been developed for individual users and small businesses, while Mozy Pro costs $3.95 monthly per user license, and an extra monthly $0.50 per gigabyte of storage. Buyers of the Lenovo laptops will also have at their disposal a service with up to 50GB storage for $48.99 a year for a limited time, while the regular price is set at $69. The Lenovo Online Data Backup can also be tried out during a free three-month trial period, with a 5GB limit.
While introducing the Lenovo-branded service, Mozy spokesman Devin Knighton has revealed that Mozy is also operating an upgrade to its system for privately managed encryption from the Blowfish technology, which was used prior to AES (Advanced Encryption Standard). Other Mozy users will benefit from the stronger encryption as well.
With Mozy's services, users can backup data on their PC without having to buy and manage storage capacity. The company is offering its service for both consumers and businesses but, from a number of about 850,000 subscribers, only approximately 23,000 fall into the latter category. EMC acquired Mozy in Octomber, after it had launched Mozy Pro.
Also on Wednesday, Mozy announced that is had opened a data center in Dublin, the first one outside the US. As the European Union data-privacy laws impose that information should be stored within the E.U., the new data center is meant to help businesses from Europe in this direction.
According to Knighton, this move should also increase the international use of Mozy, as only 25 percent of its current users are located outside the US. He also said that the additional languages that would come this year are French, German, Italian, Japanese, Universal Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, and that more were set for next year. Per Knighton, the service is supposed to become available worldwide.