Is Unlimited Online Storage Going the Way of the DODO Bird?

Those dreaming the dream of unlimited online storage forever and ever just got a rude wakeup call.

A Gartner analyst says companies offering unlimited online storage are “already doing things like bandwidth throttling to help control the volume of data being stored and limiting the types of files you can backup,” according to a Computerworld article. And a major provider of online backup services says it will no longer offer unlimited plans, moving to a tiered pricing plan. That, according to PCworld.com, “destroys” the “dreams of essentially infinite online storage.”

The downfall of the great unlimited cloud storage era is good news for local and non venture capital backed managed service providers (MSPs), for whom unlimited online storage had become a competitive nightmare.

MSPs lost business to these companies or, at the very least, were only able to act as resellers for them. The costs of building out a managed online storage infrastructure were prohibitive under the unlimited storage scenario, especially when all the big companies were offering the same services at a fraction of what MSPs could sell it for without losing their shirts in the process.

But now, if the major name vendors are moving to tier-based pricing models, that makes it possible for local MSPs to compete for the backup business. And the local guys have an advantage in going for the business that the big guys can’t possibly hope to match: the local guys already know their community and know their customer base, and can deliver a far more personalized level of service that meets their customers’ individual needs. All of this, while providing them with software that solves their challenges and of course enables them to make a solid profit as well.

At ROBOBAK, we have excellent relationships with a number of MSPs throughout North America and beyond, and it’s obviously in our best interest for these MSPs to succeed. MSPs who have deployed ROBOBAK to their customers are able to deliver a full range of benefits, such as cloud based live Exchange and SQL data protection, agentless backup and restore and deduplication. Plus, unlike some of the bigger venture capital backed MSPs, local MSPs are able to tell their customers, “here’s where your data is being stored, and here’s who’s storing it.” Don’t underestimate that last point; trust builds relationship and provides peace of mind.

To be fair, several online backup companies still offer cheap, unlimited, flat rate cloud based storage, but the real question remains, for how much longer? ROBOBAK is pleased to say that tier-based pricing is where our channel partners have been all along.