Crashplan Home Shutdown – Why you should transfer to ElephantDrive

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Dear Crashplan Home users (and others too),

We believe that ElephantDrive has one of the best feature sets to upgrade your backup experience:

Your ElephantDrive account is accessible and manageable online via any browser but our software is also available/compatible for most of your devices (PC, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, NAS).

Using ElephantDrive, you can easily and securely backup your storage hardware: external hard drives (DAS – device-attached storage) or NAS – Network Attached Storage

ElephantDrive allows you to do more than just backup your data:

  • Best-in-class backup options: Version Control, Archive Control, Point-in-time restore
  • Sync between all of your devices: With Everywhere, ElephantDrive will automatically sync your selected files to all of your devices
  • Full-mobile access: View, access, save, share and upload your files from iOS or Android devices
  • Share and Collaborate: You can share files via links or share folders with other users. You also have the option to create sub-accounts

Backup data directly from your NAS to the ElephantDrive cloud.

ElephantDrive is natively integrated with most leading NAS devices (NETGEAR, Drobo, QNAP, Western Digital, Thecus, Synology, Asustor…)

ElephantDrive uses end-to-end AES 256-bit encryption.

We also allow users to use a Personal Encryption Key. This allows for ultimate confidentiality but we won’t be able to help you restore your password.

Our Personal plans start at $9.95/month with 1000GB (2 months free if you subscribe to a yearly plan).

For power users, our Business plans start at $39.95 with 2000GB of storage.

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To allow you to see for yourself risk-free, the first 30 days are free! Join us now!

 

QNAP and ElephantDrive Provide Integrated Backup Solutions for QNAP NAS

ElephantDrive has partnered with QNAP® Systems, Inc. to provide a reliable, affordable, and flexible cloud backup solution that is perfectly integrated with QNAP NAS. Designed for the latest 64-bit QNAP NAS, ElephantDrive’s storage solution integrates directly with QNAP devices and can be managed from anywhere for a complete cloud backup solution.

Users that require uncompromising data protection can combine the fast, reliable, and feature-rich QNAP NAS with the simple, secure, and cloud-integrated storage from ElephantDrive. This unique solution enables direct backups from NAS to the cloud and unifies local and cloud storage for a better user experience. ElephantDrive includes powerful administrative tools for versioning and archiving data, and provides the ability to access and share files from the cloud anytime and anywhere (including on mobile devices).

“ElephantDrive provides excellent functionality and greater choice for QNAP NAS users to protect their data,” said Meiji Chang, General Manager of QNAP, adding “We are eager to work with ElephantDrive to further improve the backup options and features available to QNAP NAS users.”

“We are excited to extend our collaboration with QNAP by expanding support for their latest models and bringing affordable, high-capacity plans to their users,” said Michael Fisher, ElephantDrive CEO. “In a world where cloud and on-premise storage solutions continue to evolve and improve together, it’s a pleasure working with the talented team and the innovative products at QNAP”

QNAP users can take advantage of ElephantDrive’s special offer of $9.95/month for 1,000 GB of storage, available with a 30-day trial period.

ElephantDrive app is available for download on the QTS App Center https://www.qnap.com/en/app_center/.

About ElephantDrive, Inc.

ElephantDrive is committed to providing individuals and businesses simple but powerful tools for protecting and accessing their data. We want ordinary people to enjoy the peace of mind that comes from the type of enterprise-class backup, storage, and data management that has historically only been available to big corporations, and the convenience of the latest and greatest web-based solutions. For more information, please visit www.elephantdrive.com.

About QNAP Systems, Inc.

QNAP Systems, Inc., as its brand promise “Quality Network Appliance Provider”, aims to deliver comprehensive offerings of cutting edge network-attached storage (NAS) and network video recorder (NVR) solutions featured with ease-of-use, robust operation, large storage capacity, and trustworthy reliability. QNAP integrates technologies and designs to bring forth quality products that effectively improve business efficiency on file sharing, virtualization applications, storage management and surveillance in the business environments, as well as enrich entertainment life for home users with the offering of a fun multimedia center experience. Headquartered in Taipei, QNAP delivers its solutions to the global market with nonstop innovation. More information is available from www.qnap.com.

ElephantDrive is now available on all ASUSTOR NAS devices

ElephantDrive’s Cloud Backup Solution is now available for all ASUSTOR NAS devices. All ASUSTOR NAS users can download and install ElephantDrive from App Central to enjoy further peace of mind with this new cloud backup option.

ASUSTOR NAS users will be able to download and install the ElephantDrive App via ASUSTOR App Central. ElephantDrive provides an online cloud backup service that allows data from ASUSTOR NAS devices to be backed up in real time or via scheduling to ElephantDrive’s encrypted cloud storage space. Data can also be conveniently restored in the event of an accident, significantly enhancing data availability.

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“We are delighted to begin our collaboration with ASUSTOR. Our goal has always been to provide seamlessly integrated cloud backup solutions for NAS devices, so it was only a matter of time before we offered support for ASUSTOR’s powerful and user-friendly devices,” said Michael Fisher, CEO at ElephantDrive. “We are convinced that the combination of ASUSTOR’s hardware and ElephantDrive’s cloud services will satisfy the most demanding users.”

“We are elated to be bringing ElephantDrive’s cloud backup solutions to all ASUSTOR NAS users,” said James Su, Product Manager at ASUSTOR. “We aim to provide our users with the best backup and data protection solutions, securing their data and providing peace of mind.”

ASUSTOR recognizes the demanding requirements that users have for backup, providing a host of comprehensive backup solutions that give users the flexibility to configure backups in different usage scenarios. ASUSTOR backup solutions include the Backup Plan utility for Windows, Time Machine support for Mac, FTP/Rsync backup to remote servers, and synchronized backup to cloud storage services such as Dropbox, Owncloud, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, HiDrive and hubiC. The addition of support for ElephantDrive provides yet another high quality cloud backup option for users to choose from.

For more information about ElephantDrive’s features and take advantage of ElephantDrive’s exclusive pricing, please visit: http://home.elephantdrive.com/asustor-cloudfs/

How to install ElephantDrive: https://support.elephantdrive.com/hc/en-us/articles/114094062914-How-to-install-ElephantDrive-with-App-Central

ASUSTOR backup solutions: http://www.asustor.com/admv2?type=2&subject=4&sub=12

For more product information, please visit: http://www.asustor.com

Where in the world is cloud storage essential?

It turns out to be in some places that surprised some of our team members.  In a recent study, research shop GfK asked internet users in 22 countries about how strongly they agree or disagree with the statement: “it is essential for me to access or store my photos, documents, music, and other content in cloud” (with cloud defined as “ secure Internet location that you can access from any location or device”). When GfK looked at the results across the different countries represented in the survey, Mexico was the clear cloud leader, with almost half (49%) of its online population giving top-two agreement that the cloud is essential for them. Mexico is followed by Brazil at 44%, Turkey (43%), China (40%), and Russia (37%). Argentina.  The strong representation of the Latin America countries included in the survey didn’t surprise our partner development team (they’ve been working with leading internet solutions providers in those countries to enable our cloud backup, sync, and sharing tools).

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Arno Hummerston, global director of digital market intelligence at GfK, commented: “For me, it is interesting that it is mainly countries that adopted the Internet early on, that do not see cloud storage as essential.  Late Internet adopter markets, which tend to be more mobile-oriented, having leap-frogged PCs, have more people who say cloud storage is essential. The implication is that those who started off on PCs or laptops (which have large internal storage) now have a significant mental adjustment to make, in accepting cloud storage. But those who have mostly only ever used mobile devices find cloud storage normal.

NAS Market to Grow

At ElephantDrive, we are huge fans of Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices.  As a cloud backup, sync, and sharing platform, we are focused on helping users migrate their data into the cloud.  That being said, we’ve always envisioned a hybrid world in which simple, secure online storage complements fast, reliable local storage. NAS devices are ideal components of this type of mixed system, so we’ve become the leader for tightly integrated backup for NAS makers.
We recently came across a great article highlighting expected growth in the NAS industry. Below you’ll find a synopsis of what we think are the most important details. However, if you want to read the full report, please click here.
A study by Research Markets reported that global enterprise NAS storage markets are expected to grow at a CAGR of 25.85% over the period of 2014-2019. According to the report, enterprises worldwide are expanding businesses in order to stay cometitive-thus leading to new trends in this vertical. Significant infrastructure development, growing business data, and users need for collaborative file/folder sharing abilities are driving this significant market growth.

Manage cloud backup services trends in SMBs

Talkin’Cloud reported on compelling new survey data that illustrates how comprehensive cloud backup solutions have become an essential piece of the services portfolio that MSPs offer to their SMB customers.  The recent survey (of 434 U.S. based IT resellers and MSPs) reveals the impact of cloud backup offerings on their business. Key findings from the Survey: Managed Cloud Backup Services are:

  • 51 percent of respondents pointed that “they could not effectively compete without cloud backup solutions as part of their portfolios.”
  • 79% of the survey respondents predicted increasing demand for cloud backup solutions in the next 12 months.
  • 75% of respondents find their managed cloud backup solutions as a gateway to up-selling more high-margin services
  • Reliability and cost are top factors for consideration with reliability of service being a greater of the two.

The top concern for SMBs that are still waiting to adopt cloud backup solutions is the need to keep data on-site for security reasons.  ElephantDrive is one of the most comprehensive cloud backup, sync, and sharing solutions providers and has addressed security concerns by enforcing on-site encryption (using 256-bit AES) of all data backed up to ElephantDrive. This means that you data never leaves your devices unencrypted.  Additionally, the data is transferred over a secure SSL channel. For even greater security, ElephantDrive also offers the option to encrypt data using user provided keys. This ensures that only you (or whomever you share your password with) has the ability to decrypt your data. You can read more about all the security measures ElephantDrive takes to protect our customers data here.

ElephantDrive has been working with resellers and MSPs in the U.S. and internationally to enable them to resell the ElephantDrive cloud backup solution. To learn more about ElephantDrive’s robust reseller program, check out the ElephantDrive Reseller Program PDF here.

Why backing up your data in the Cloud has become the rule and not the exception

In IDC’s white paper: “The Growth Opportunity for SMB Cloud and Hybrid Business Continuity” (BC), analysts review the shift SMB’s are making from backing up their data on-premise to backing it up in the Cloud. In an effort to mitigate the economic risks of downtime, cut operational costs, and reduce complexity, SMB’s are looking at cloud- based solutions to improve their IT strategies.

Specifically, SMB’s are looking for commercial grade solutions that are:

  • Holistic, providing a range of BC services, from data protection and recovery to archiving/data retention to replication and availability
  • Simple, eliminating infrastructure and operational complexity
  • Cost effective, offering reduced Capex and an economically viable fit with a typical SMB BC budget
  • Cloud enabled, meeting public and/or hybrid cloud deployment requirements and offering offsite data protection and DR and a predictable Opex model

When it comes to Cloud data backup, the more robust features, the better. We’ve outlined how we compare with other solutions below- and will briefly talk through how ElephantDrive is keeping up with SMB’s projected investments by going to market as a comprehensive Cloud solution.

Comparison Chart

ElephantDrive Feature Comparison Table

Economically, a full-service Cloud and syncing solution makes the most sense. Instead of having to separately purchase both a Cloud backup and data syncing program users should have the option of taking advantage of a comprehensive platform that solves their every need. Logistically, this makes accessing your work and important data easier.

The future outlook is clear: “72% of SMBs expect to outlay additional investments in BC over the next 12-24 months…those SMBs without a BC solution will make an investment in the same time period.” We’ve addressed SMB’s demand for a viable Cloud solution by offering a holistic backup solution at an attractive price point. So now, it’s up to SMB’s- will your company be the rule, or the exception?

 

Service Incident and Updates

Dec 18, 2014

11:07 PST: Some users may have experienced a temporary interruption in accessing their data starting around 11:07 Pacific Time.

13:30 PST: Service has been fully restored using our failover processes.

23:26 PST: We are about to implement a few additional changes to streamline our return to multiple layers of redundancy – unfortunately, that will mean that all users will have limited access for approximately the next 3 hours. We will post throughout. This is a result of today’s earlier infrastructure issues – we’d rather have a short period of inaccessibility in order to more quickly return to full capacity.

Dec 19, 2014

00:25 PST Update – 1 hour in and still on target to return full access in another 2. We will keep you posted. Thanks for your patience.

01:20 PST..and… we’re back! Herd, thanks again for your patience. We’ve completed the initial work and re-enabled full access!

Summary of Events (non-technical)

We experienced some issues with a core service instance yesterday and noticed that underlying hardware was underperforming. Our operational plan is designed to deal with such contingencies (hey – we’re a backup company, so we’ve got some serious backup plans). We keep redundant systems available and up to date to enable a nearly seamless failover, even when a critical component isn’t functioning. This design allows restoring service in very short time period, but we also like to double check to make sure things are running smoothly. We executed our failover, and after confirming all data was sound, we restored service by 13:30 PST. This completed the first step of our contingency plan to restore service.

Having employed one of our redundant systems, we were now operating with one fewer safety mechanism than normal. Our next step is always to focus on immediately re-integrating a new system to add that extra layer of protection back in, but Murphy’s Law is always in effect. The automated process was moving too slowly for our taste, so our team continued to work late into the night to create an additional copy of the affected component. To exercise the maximum amount of caution during this window, our team felt compelled to limit access to the service for a short period between 23:26 PST and 01:20 PST while snapshots and copies completed. The new redundancy layer was created and service returned to fully normal by 01:20 PST.

All data is intact and no data was lost or corrupted during this incident. We apologize again for any inconvenience and want to assure you that our engineering team is continuing to improve our processes and infrastructure to minimize (goal is to eliminate) any future incidents like this.

Cloud Data Backup and the Complete Accounting Solution

Cloud Data Backup and the Complete Accounting Solution

Adam Bluemner from Find Accounting Software and Joti Kang from ElephantDrive Inc. discuss how cloud backup is an essential part of a complete office “solution”. To learn what to look for in a cloud backup solution and benefits of cloud backup, read the interview at findaccountingsoftware.com