Steven Johnson
Cloud Storage Reviews
Alexander Negrash
CloudBerryInterview By Steven Johnson
For our interview with CloudBerry we have Alexander Negrash from CloudBerry. Alexander is the Marketing Manager at CloudBerry Lab. CloudStorageReviews.co thanks CloudBerry for being a part of this interview and answering questions to help everyone understand the products and services.
1. Cloudberry appears to primarily have desktop and server software for backup. Can you tell us a little about CloudBerry’s products and services?
It’s true that we concentrate our efforts on cloud backup software development. Besides CloudBerry Backup Desktop and Windows Server editions that you’ve mentioned we provide our customers with cloud backup applications for WHS 2011 and SBS 2011 Essentials.
We also offer Managed Backup Service powered by CloudBerry Backup and Amazon S3 cloud storage to service providers and resellers who looks for a powerful and reliable Cloud Backup service to grow their business and offer exceptional cloud backup service under their own brand.
In addition to cloud backup solutions we have CloudBerry Explorer in our product portfolio. This is a file manager for cloud storage such as Amazon S3, Windows Azure, OpenStack and Rackspace Cloud Files, Google Storage and couple others. It comes in freeware and PRO versions and allows to manage files on cloud the same way as you would on your own computer.
2. Does CloudBerry offer any online storage plans?
Actually we don’t. We offer software for leading cloud storage providers, so that end users can easily exploit cloud services as files or/and backup storage. It is up to our customers to decide what storage plan within what provider fits their needs better.
In addition the end users can benefit from the storage providers low prices and special offers directly. For instance Rackspace Cloud Files just slashed their prices by 33%. However we are considering adding a free plan with limited storage to make it easier for some of our customers.
3. What are the benefits of CloudBerry vs. a traditional backup service such as Carbonite or Mozy?
First of all our customers are free to choose where to store their backups. That means we don’t have access to the data our users backup and it remains under their full possession, meaning backups can be accessed at anytime from anywhere and restored even without CloudBerry Lab software.
The second important issue is that CloudBerry Backup is one time purchase product. The only thing users will need to pay on the ongoing basis is direct storage costs, which most of the cloud storage providers charge on the “pay-as-you-go” base, meaning users will pay only for the storage space they actually use.
4. Which features make CloudBerry different from the rest?
CloudBerry Backup is very flexible in terms of functionality. Users can setup real-time or scheduled backup plan with compression, encryption, block level backup, intelligent bandwidth scheduler, alerting notifications, etc. Our development team constantly working on developing new features. Recently we’ve released new version of CloudBerry Backup, where we’ve addressed SMB needs and introduced features to simplify Cloud Backup network deployment by storing backup plan configuration in the cloud and to enhance security by encrypting files and folders names.
5. Tell us a little about the history of CloudBerry. When and why was it established? What were the goals of the company when it first started?
In 2008 we started to use Amazon S3 as the main cloud storage. I must say that today, having AWS console, tons of documentation and dozens if not hundreds of Amazon S3 related software, it is not so hard to exploit S3 as it used to be in 2008. But back then it was only for developers. And that was the issue for us too and we started to develop CloudBerry Explorer. The intent was to create a simple desktop client with file manager functionality to help store and manage files on S3.
As a result we came up with FTP-like client in the best traditions of Norton Commander. We shared it with the community and it was not about money. It was and still is free of charge. The product grew over the time and we extended it with related AWS services such as CloudFront, IAM and AWS Import/ Export. Then CloudBerry Backup came on stage and here we are in 2012 developing Cloud Backup solution and services for our customers.
6. What are the demographics of the CloudBerry customers? Are they primarily individuals or businesses?
It’s quite different, but in general it breaks down to SMB, and IT service companies in particular.
7. What is something else people don’t know about CloudBerry?
CloudBerry Lab is an official AWS Solution provider and we will be soon featured on the AWS Marketplace.
8. Any future plans you can tell us about?
We’re planning to release CloudBerry Drive, that will mount cloud storage as a local drive and make a version of CloudBerry Backup specifically designed to backup applications such as MS Exchange and MS SQL Server.
9. Anything else you would like to add?
Disaster recovery planning is often times an afterthought that comes to light when disaster strikes. Very seldom do companies fully recover from loss of critical data which could lead to loss of business. Protect your company from data loss and build your backup strategy with CloudBerry Backup products and reliable public clouds.
Thanks for your time! — Steven
More CloudBerry
Steven is a web developer and online technology expert. He has built global networks and websites for fortune 500 companies. A graduate of Georgia Tech in Chemical Engineering, he now happily spends his time building Joomla and WordPress websites as well as reviewing online backup services, web hosting and anything else that needs reviewing.