We now have diverse options suiting the different market segments – Zukmo for Consumers and SyncBlaze for MSPs/VARs and we are in the process of bundling the SyncBlaze service as an on premise edition for channel partners interested in hosting the services within the bounds of their infrastructure and storage domains.

FREE TRIAL 

We have introduced a free trial period of 30 days for our service providers which enables them to go for a test drive and get a hands-on feel of this service. For trying out our service, MSPs just need to fill up the minimal information requested in the SyncBlaze channel Signup page. The SyncBlaze support team will then connect with the respective Resellers and guide them in registering their accounts. Our company home page will also be redesigned in the near future to reference all our cloud solution offerings and it will provide for a way to redirect interested parties to the registration page.

We will soon be sharing the details on Pricing in our website.

KEY FEATURES

A number of core features in Sync Blaze are based on the functional adoption of its predecessor and popular customer oriented offering, Zukmo, which has been packaged and branded for business suitability.

The main features for the business edition are as follows:

• Enables your customers to securely store all types of business content with version control.
• Facilitates simplified file sharing with employees/clients etc. without the need for Emails/FTP/ Shared File servers to exchange business critical documents.
• Provides Universal Access from any Workstation, iPhone, Android, iPad etc. through the mobile web platform, desktop utilities and browser extensions.
• User friendly Collaboration for multidisciplinary teams to view/edit files instantly
• Offers a centralized searchable repository for all end user content – Files, Web content, Notes, Google Apps Docs, Emails & Social media
• Collect and Organize tagged Google Apps Docs, Emails, Notes, RSS feeds, Bookmarks, Social & Embedded media
• Reseller and Customer Administration module for control and configuration
• Powered by Amazon AWS – HIPAA, SOX & PCI Compliant infrastructure.

For starters, we have a Features page with a snapshot of the capabilities and also a more detailed Learn More section that covers each of the features in greater depth. We will also be featuring a series of blog posts covering the important functionalities in more depth with relevant information, illustrations and videos in some cases. Also, watch our blog space for more product updates.

During the past couple of months, we have been connecting and conversing with some of the partners who had expressed interest in providing SyncBlaze as a value added service to their customers. We hope to be aggressively marketing and communicating with many more partners & resellers to increase the brand awareness and also to strongly leverage their suggestions, requests and feedback to further refine our product development roadmap.

With Vembu Home Synchronization feature, you can seamlessly work on a document from your office PC or your home PC without having to copy files back and forth. Once you add a document to be synchronized with Vembu Home, the document will be automatically synchronized to any number of devices you want the document to be available.

Configuring Vembu Home to sync your data

After installing Vembu Home in your computer, register for free Vembu Home account by accessing Vembu Home Agent console,

Once you complete with the registration process, login to Vembu Home Agent Console.

Once logged in, you don’t have to use the Vembu Home Agent Console to synchronize your files. You can simply sync your data right from your Windows explorer as you browse files.

Right-click on a file or folder from your Windows Explorer, select Sync with Vembu Home and then choose either one of the following option to synchronize your data across multiple devices.

Copy to sync folder – Choosing this option will copy the selected file or folder for synchronization to the Vembu Sync folder. You need to manually do this every time you change the file in the original location so that the changes would be synchronized to the Vembu Home Cloud and subsequently to other devices you have configured.

Sync from current location – Choosing this option will include the selected file or folder for Synchronization from its current location – without copying to the Vembu Sync folder. If you modify the file, the synchronization process will be automatically synchronize the modified content to the Vembu Home Cloud and subsequently to other devices you have configured.

Sharing files Online through Vembu Home

If you need to share some of your files with your friends or colleagues online, Vembu Home is a simple and secure tool to achieve this. You can upload and share files online from your desktop with a single click.

Right-click a file or folder in Windows Explorer, select “Sync with Vembu Home” and then choose “Upload and Share” option to share files online.

Upload and share – Choosing this option will upload the selected file to Vembu Home Cloud and provide you with a link you could share with others.

For more details on Vembu Home’s File Synchronization & File Sharing features, please refer this document http://home.vembu.com/features.php

If you haven’t installed the Vembu Home yet, now is the time to do it. We will be adding more and more exciting features in the near future. If you are an existing user, please find the instructions to upgrade to the latest version of Vembu Home from here.

The above post was written by Arul Prabhu of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.

Vembu Home is the only FREE consumer backup solution for free local backups and optional Amazon Cloud backups. Get your FREE COPY now.

Yes, you heard it right! Much awaited Vembu Pro Online Backup Service hosted on Amazon Web Services infrastructure comes out of beta to production and with this release; Resellers and Service Providers can now offer brandable online backup service to their business customers without worrying about the investments for storage and backend infrastructure. Vembu Pro is powered by Vembu’s flagship product StoreGrid which is currently trusted by over 2000 Service Providers worldwide and is exclusively offered through Resellers and Channel Partners.

Start your own branded Online Backup Service with Vembu Pro in just three simple steps

1)      Sign up for a Vembu Pro reseller account
2)      Generate a customized branded client agent right from Vembu Pro console
3)      Start backing up your client’s data to the Vembu Pro servers running on the Amazon Web Services Cloud infrastructure.

Details on Vembu Pro pricing can be viewed here.

Due to the strong demand from Resellers and Service Providers from European region, Vembu Pro is also launched in European Region Clusters which will now enable European Resellers to offer brandable online backup service to businesses with the data being backed up to an Amazon Web Services Datacenter located in Europe.

Doesn’t that sound great?

Here’s one more reason to check out Vembu Pro. Marking the successful production launch of Vembu Pro Online Backup Service, we have extended a Special Introductory Offer.

Email us at pro-partner@vembu.com to learn more about the Special Introductory offer.

What are you still waiting for?
Check out Vembu Pro now and take your first step towards offering profitable online backup service to your business customers.

The above post was written by Lenin Srinivasan of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.

Vembu Home is the only FREE consumer backup solution for free local backups and optional Amazon Cloud backups. Get your FREE COPY now.

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Why did we launch only 10 GB storage plan?

With this initial production launch, we want to get to know more about Vembu Home user’s adoption for cloud storage. Based on the results and user feedback we are planning to provide premium storage options in  the coming months.

What shall you do if you need more storage immediately in the cloud?

Please e-mail Vembu Home support at help@vembu.com with your requirements. We will try hard to incorporate your suggestion as we do more updates to Vembu Home.

Besides payment plan and making Vembu Home production ready, lots of exciting stuff has happened with this update. While most of the changes are back-end performance stuff, there has been a prolific effort in fixing bugs and making Vembu Home easy to use. Surely, this update belongs to the Vembu Home Server cluster, which has sort of come of age to provide a smooth and uninterrupted service for our users. Watch out for lots more cool stuff coming your way in our coming updates.

The above post was written by Jay of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.

Vembu Home is the only FREE consumer backup solution for free local backups and optional Amazon Cloud backups. Get your FREE COPY now.

[Updated @ 09:30 AM PDT] Maintenance operation is still going on, we will update you once the service is up and running.

[Update @ 10:30 AM PDT] Maintenance in our Amazon infrastructure has been completed. Vembu Home service is now available. More details on the maintenance update once our initial stability tests are complete.

Fast forward to 2010 – The Thomas Jefferson University Hospital is on Facebook connecting to its users.  The doctor my friend knew would be overjoyed to hear this.  The Facebook page has invites to screening events, announcements for speeches and lots more information*.   And with Facebook expected to close in on 500 million users next month, there is no doubt that cloud based social networking solutions (Facebook, Twitter etc.) are heaven-sent for consumer organizations who want to redefine their interaction with users (and successfully beat the competition in the process too).

CRN mentioned this recently as a successful example of ‘Consumerizing’ the Cloud – while also mentioning other medical players like Kaiser Permanente which lets patients to select and swap doctors while rating them as a user community.

The dizzying growth of social networking sites has been questioned quite a lot in the past.  Umair Haque asks,

“If we take social media at face value, the number of friends in the world has gone up a hundredfold. But have we seen an accompanying rise in trust?”

Most of the social networking solutions using the Cloud (e.g. tons of Facebook apps now run on the Amazon Cloud) are rarely about ‘trust, connection and community’ and are more about attention grabs and clicks. This recent development by Thomas Jefferson University is like a whiff of fresh air in the hodgepodge that is ‘social networking’ these days.

What does this mean for other organizations which think they are missing the bus by not being on ‘social media’? – I believe that organizations that take Cloud based social networking solutions seriously and redefine their model of reaching out and offering services to customers will be leaders in their field while their counterparts who simply choose to fiddle with social-media ‘presence’ instead will be left behind.

* – I admit Facebook is not a prime example for illustrating this point; what with Facebook’s shooting itself in the foot with privacy settings and the recent flak that it has received. Needless to say, any implementation of ‘consumerizing’ the Cloud should ensure that no user medical information is ever entrusted to Mr. Zuckerberg or to a Facebook app!

The above post was written by Gokul Sriram of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.

Vembu Home is the only FREE consumer backup solution for free local backups and optional Amazon Cloud backups. Get your FREE COPY now.

Vembu StoreGrid and Amazon Web Services have been working closely on a new technology – and the time is right for us to talk about StoreGrid’s support to Amazon’s QC2 service (Quantum Computing Cloud).  This ground breaking solution makes use of qubits (or quantum bits) for manipulating the data states probabilistically and using them for backing up data.  This enables users to achieve unprecedented levels of RTO’s and RPO’s using StoreGrid QMI (Quantum Machine Image) for data backups.

Amazon’s Quantum Computing Cloud (QC2) will be hosted on select Availability Zones within Amazon Data Centers. The core of these qubit-enabled backups has been implemented using StoreGrid’s new technology called StoreGrid ET^TM (StoreGrid Entanglement).

This technology relies on Quantum Entanglement phenomenon that allows transfer of data as quantum energy from the client over to the server without traversing the intervening space by manipulating the data states probabilistically.   This means that data transfer will take place a whole lot faster to your Quantum Backup Server without being hampered by bandwidth restrictions like T1 lines.

With this new technology, StoreGrid allows data to be transferred to Amazon Quantum Cloud at very high speeds without requiring any internet or physical data connections.  This new version of StoreGrid is currently under Beta and is already available to some of our MSP partners who have been actively testing it out.

Here is what our VP, Storage Systems; Sathish Subramanian has to say about this new release.

“We consider this innovative usage of qubits for data backup to be a giant leap in data communication & storage technology and will change how the industry looks at data backups and restores.”

For Service Providers, this new release means that their customers can now backup ANY data to Amazon Quantum Cloud without worrying about storage space and bandwidth etc.   We are working on the pricing model for this new technology and expect to release the pricing for this new release by end of this month.

What are you waiting for!

Click here to download your 360 day free trial today!

The above post was written by Lenin Srinivasan of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.

Vembu Home is the only FREE consumer backup solution for free local backups and optional Amazon Cloud backups. Get your FREE COPY now.

Why many SMBs are reluctant to Cloud?

“Cloud Computing” – a buzz word that’s on the peak of Hype Cycle for quite some time now is still a ‘jargon’ to many SMBs and Mid Market Companies. It was interesting to see the results of the ‘cloud hosting awareness survey’ conducted by RackSpace that more than two thirds of the SMBs in US are not familiar with the term “Cloud Hosting” – Wow!

Now, two questions immediately arise in our mind. Is that the Small Businesses failed to grasp the cloud computing technology or the Cloud hosting providers done a horrendous job in marketing to that segment? I can understand why cloud hosting providers are more catered towards the ‘enterprise segment’ expecting some big deals ($$$) instead of focusing on mom and pop services which are typical of SMBs.

Now that even if the cloud hosting providers turned their flash light on SMBs and started to focus on this segment, they are faced with two big questions (barriers) that needs a fix.

1) Security and privacy concerns
2) Benefit over existing hosting service

A recent Forrester survey reveals that 51% of SMB survey respondents cited security and privacy concerns as their top reason for not adopting cloud computing yet. Small Businesses need a TRUE value proposition on why they need to move their data out of their premises and the real business value they derive out of it. These are some prime reasons on why many SMBs are still reluctant to cloud.

Why SMBs need the cloud?

BANT (Budget, Authority, Need and Time frame) is one(four) good reason on why Small Businesses need the cloud – Sounds like a typical sales pitch?

Budget – The cost of running and managing an in-house data center is increasing exponentially year by year and more than the hardware cost, it’s the support & management cost and business app cost etc… that are the real pain points. On top of it, increasing cost for the maintenance required for the datacenter, electrical power supplies, cooling, bandwidth etc… are some prime factors on why SMBs need the cloud.

Authority – When small businesses require a business app, it has to go through lots of stages especially when maintained in-house. Right from staging, development, testing, production and fail over environment, the in-house IT department will be working on lots of other items as well in order to bring up the business app. Now if there should be a technical problem with the storage devices or servers, SMBs typically don’t have the situation under control and have to rely on the hardware vendor’s technical support.

Need – SMBs usually do not have remote data centers for managing their offsite data backup requirements. Data Backup is more than a need – a mandate for running successful businesses. Businesses without proactive backup and recovery policies are likely to be OUT OF BUSINESS within 2 years of a major disaster. Replication to a cloud platform is an effective data backup and recovery strategy and helps Small Businesses to withstand a data disaster.

Timeframe – Small businesses don’t have to go through a typical two week purchase order process and additional two weeks of configuration, staging, testing etc… in order for a Business Application to be available for production use. With Cloud Computing, they can get up and running in few days and this quick process will have a profitable impact on the business.


Small Businesses have always more reasons to shift their data out of their premises and move it to the cloud. But they are reluctant and held up and what they need is the right message that “Your Data is Safe and Your Business is Protected” to get them up and running on the cloud.

The above post was written by Lenin Srinivasan of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.

Vembu Home is the only FREE consumer backup solution for free local backups and optional Amazon Cloud backups. Get your FREE COPY now.

We have always believed that the Cloud would be a valuable addition to an MSP’s arsenal – and we went about supporting Amazon Cloud services precisely because of that.  This enabled our partners to either operate their entire backup service out of Amazon’s EC2/S3 services or simply leverage S3 storage service for the offsite replication.  And we are sure glad we were able to see the business value this brought to MSPs early on and be among the first to adopt this crucial step in the backup/storage industry.

The concepts of substance and form always been closely examined since historical times.    Steve DuPlessie (of ESG fame) gave a unique twist to this age-old ‘form vs. substance’ conundrum with this incisive post on the Cloud here -

Surely, the Cloud is a very convenient ‘construct’ – so much so that it took a lot of time for the industry and analysts to even pin down a definition for the Cloud!   Steve makes two significant points in this post – one, that ‘being’ a Cloud is a sure way to failing in the long run (after a great round A valuation, of course ) and two, that ‘using’ the Cloud for viable solutions will be better off than those masquerading AS the Cloud.

The Cloud ‘form’ became very important for all those who sought to ride the media wave when the Cloud started getting a whole lot of media attention last year.  I noticed several BU/DR firms started sporting the term ‘Cloud Backups’.  This was funny since none of them had even the basic characteristics of cloud computing (like scalablilty (on the scale of the Amazon Cloud),  true pay-for-what-you-use model, etc.) – features which can only come through actual seamless integration of a backup solution with a Cloud service provider.

I believe that the ‘substance’ of the Cloud is what counts for a service provider – the solution to her client’s problem that makes business sense for her to provide.  Not all the ‘form’ – backup players sporting websites with ‘Cloud’ strewn all over – the proverbial new bottle for their old wine.

Vembu StoreGrid has provided a perfect platform for MSPs to USE the Cloud where it makes perfect business sense.  Case in point, offsite replication from StoreGrid to Amazon’s dependable S3 storage service costs less than 50cents/GB/month*.  Before this, MSPs were used to spending ridiculous amounts to get offsite storage services of questionable security with no scalability or pay-for-use model.

We still see a lot of backup players going gung-ho about Cloud related terms for their backup solutions – Public Clouds (as opposed to what?), Hybrid Clouds (an umbrella term meant to cover all they wished were a Cloud, but wasn’t)…. and so on.

I see that when the dust settles on the Cloud phenomenon, MSPs will be quick to see what is getting passed of as ‘Cloud Backups’ to them.  I think the day when the skies will clear is not far off and all undeserved ‘Cloud Backup’ terms in several websites will be off in a jiffy!

* – As of  1st Feb 2010.  Please check the latest AWS pricing here.

The above post was written by Gokul Sriram of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.

Vembu Home is the only FREE consumer backup solution for free local backups and optional Amazon Cloud backups. Get your FREE COPY now.

Two days ago,  Amazon announced Amazon Web Services (AWS) calculator on their blog. I can see this becoming quite useful, and am, in fact, surprised that they didn’t do this earlier.

You can access the AWS Simple Monthly Calculator here. The calculator, currently in Beta, allows you to get an idea of the kind of costs you can expect for different services that you might use. They’ve even had a stab at typical figures you might be seeing for some ‘typical use cases’.

Don’t see the use cases? You need to scroll to the right if your resolution is 1024 x 768 (or lower)  – see the screenshot above.

The five use cases they have are (comments in brackets are my own):

• A marketing website (bandwidth intensive; requests from visitors)
• A Web App (would use more of computing resources, including DB)
• A Media application (storage & bandwidth intensive)
• HPC Cluster (CPU intensive)
• Disaster Recovery & Backup (storage intensive and computing to a lesser degree)

Take the numbers with a pinch of salt (an ounce, in the case of DR & Backup). But that’s not the point – I think it is pretty bold of them to hazard a guess knowing fully well that one size won’t fit all…

Rather than take the numbers at face value, you should focus on the AWS services in the ‘mix’, i.e. the different services that AWS assume you will use for each scenario. It serves to give you a good idea of the services you should be looking at.

We’ll take a more detailed look and provide some data that’s more relevant to StoreGrid + AWS deployments. Stay tuned.

The above post was written by Lakshmanan (Lux) Narayan of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.

Vembu Home is the only FREE consumer backup solution for free local backups and optional Amazon Cloud backups. Get your FREE COPY now.