News

posted on 16 July 2008 10:12

Iomega hard drives will have Mozy cloud backup software added to them so home users can backup their backup to Mozy's remote data centres in the Internet cloud.

The drives already come with Retrospect software enabling home PC owners to backup data onto the externally-attached Iomega drive.

Customers buying an Iomega hard drive will now find it pre-loaded with Mozy software so they can sign up for Mozy's cloud backup service at $4.95 month for all the data they care to backup. The Mozy copy of their data is there as insurance against an external drive crash or other home disaster, and also provides information sharing by allowing friends and colleagues to access files held there. The Imomega home external drive owner can also access their files while travelling.

It is expected that this will become a standard offering for all external drive suppliers. EMC's Iomega business is here following a lead set by Seagate's Maxtor Central Axis product.

EMC bought Retrospect (Dantz) in 2004, Mozy (Berkeley Data Systems) in 2007 and Iomega in June this year. Iomega CEO Jonathan Huberman is now president of the EMC's consumer and small business products group. More such product cross-fertilization can be expected.

^{[Martin Edwards, news writer.]}