Mozy

Thousands of technologists attend VMware’s annual conference VMworld to increase their skills and discover what exciting new things the company is working on. One of the technologies previewed in San Francisco today by VMware’s Chief Technology Officer Dr. Stephen Herrod involved Mozy.

What Herrod unveiled was VMware’s “Horizon” project—a tool that will help busy IT administrators simplify the lives of the end users they serve. When an end user logs on from any Horizon-managed computer, he can access every application that has been assigned to him. These applications could be Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, like Google Docs or Salesforce.com. But they can also be traditional desktop applications, such as Microsoft Word, which get installed on demand when the user needs them using VMware’s ThinApp technology.

So what does any of that have to do with Mozy? Traditional desktop applications store their data by saving files onto a local or network drive. But in an organization where employees might move from computer to computer (either from desk to desk, or from work to home), you need your files accessible across devices and locations, and that is where cloud storage comes in.

Storing files securely in the cloud is exactly what Mozy does, so we were delighted to support the Horizon team with technology that synchronizes the user’s files between the Mozy storage cloud and the local computer. This technology complements Horizon, fulfilling the cloud’s promise of complete mobility for end users, not only for SaaS applications but for desktop applications, too—along with the user’s files.

We were pleased to work with VMware in support of the VMworld preview of Horizon, and hope to continue collaborating together on promising projects.

On this important day when millions of people across the globe gather together for Earth Day, I sit at my desk and look at the scanner I picked up a few weeks ago. I think about the continuing trend where more of us are trading our filing cabinets for scanners, where old shoe boxes of photos have found their way on our computers )and sometimes on our wall on Facebook). In our own small way, we work together to protect the environment by digitizing our information and recycling the original copies.

As we move to a digital world where our documents, music, photos, video and personal information is digitized, we reduce our waste and environmental footprint. Unfortunately, all that information can be lost in an instant if our hard drive crashes or if a drink gets spilled on our computers. Just yesterday I received an e-mail from Mark Fuerst who lives in Brooklyn, New York. He told me he accidentally erased his records of his earnings from last year while preparing for this year’s taxes. Within a few minutes, he recovered all his information through his Mozy account. He said both he and his accountant are “eternally grateful.”

So whether you’re backing up online with Mozy or backing up to an external hard drive with an Iomega device, we encourage you to keep your data safe and keep being green.

- Devin Knighton

We here at Mozy are excited to announce a new partnership with Vodafone! Vodafone is the world’s largest international mobile telecom company, with mobile networks in over 70 countries (including a 45% stake in US telecom giant Verizon Wireless), more than 300 million customers, and over $60 billion in annual revenues. They will be introducing a range of business and consumer personal cloud services that are built on Decho’s Mozy online backup service. They’ll initially launch with a PC backup and data management service that will allow customers to protect, access, organize, and share their data. This service will be launched across a number of Vodafone’s European markets throughout the rest of the year.

This partnership, along with our partnerships with China Telecom and McAfee, highlight the emergence of “the personal cloud,” a phrase coined by Frank Gillett of Forrester (subscription required) to mean the movement of individuals’ personal data into the cloud, where they’ll be able to monitor, safeguard, and use their data anytime, anywhere. It’s an exciting revolution in the way we interact with our information, and we’re thrilled to be at the forefront.

Just another quick graphic to show how our digital lives are becoming more and more integrated with the cloud through email, streaming video and music, mobile devices like phones and netbooks, and services like Mozy that help people put their data in the cloud where it can be accessed from virtually anywhere.

In the past several years, Internet usage in China has absolutely exploded, and now there are more than 330 million Chinese Internet users who, like everyone else, have data that needs to be protected and secured.

That’s why we here at Decho/Mozy are excited to announce our partnership with China Telecom, the largest telecommunications and broadband provider in China! With China Telecom’s 214 million fixed lines, 47 million broadband subscribers, and 35 million mobile users, we’ll be able to help millions of Chinese Internet users protect and manage their data in the cloud!

We’re calling the new service eYun (which is Chinese for eCloud). It’s powered by Mozy and already has 15,000 pilot users,. We’ll initially be providing safe, secure online backup services, but in the future, eYun will let users do even more with their data with additional cloud services.

You can find out more about the Mozy/China Telecom partnership in our press release.