FarStone Update
When we last spoke to Irvine, Calif.-based FarStone, it had won a customer that supplies other ISPs: Authentium.
The company has been streamlining its product to make it easier to make RestoreIT part of a security bundle offered to residential customers. "We always need to ask service providers what they want to build," says Jerry Puda, director of business development. "We need to ask them if they want a local client with a GUI or a web-based solution. Do they want to just do storage or do they want to add file storage and security?"
These questions play to RestoreIT's strengths. The solution creates a software image in a separate partition of the customer's hard drive, allowing the customer to go back to a previous state, even if the computer won't boot. Thus, it works even if there's no internet connection. Many other backup products depend on a functioning internet connection.
Bullish on security
The company is part of an industry-wide expansion in the remote backup industry. In addition, last week the company announced a new server edition for its RestoreIT technology. FarStone also pointed us to a research note from PiperJaffray on Symantec. The note's top reason for being bullish on Symantec is this: "We believe online backup will be the next major trend in consumer PC security." FarStone believes the same.
"We find that consumers have more JPEGs and music files than an SMB customer," says Puda. "RestoreIT is always available. Integrated with online backup partners, it provides the best of both worlds."
Customers demand a lot of their backup solution, says Puda. "It's a stressful situation and customers demand immediate results."
Pricing and availability
The integrated RestoreIT product is available on a revenue share model that the company calls it's "SaaS pricing model."