Assuming that storage costs are halving every 18 months, I would assume that charging $N/mo for backup (amortized over a lifetime of say, 4 years) would be a really reasonable business model.
As they say, there's always going to be outliers, all you need to do is cover the average cost of backup for the average user. This seems easy to me, and very easy to plan & estimate what your costs are.
In short -- The first digital camera I used had a floppy disk that fit about 20 photos. (Maybe 75KB). My camera now takes 7.5MB Photos (higher if I shoot in raw) and rather than taking 20-40 in a session -- I'll take 100. The first computer I connected to the internet had a 4GB Hard Drive. I currently have around 3.9TB of storage connected to the internet.
This isn't a gmail play. Barring celebrity status -- you can only recieve so many emails... (Dunbars number and all that). As my storage costs decrease I use more storage and need more backups. They mention that these roughly balance out. The problem they have is that costs like electricity/cooling/staffing are not likely to be going down any time soon.
(From one to another. Frog, that is.)
BTW I just installed Tarsnap on the ReadyNAS NV+, it works! It's really slow because the CPU on the NV+ is quite lame, but for simple text files it's fantastic and creates peace of mind.
Mozy seems to be doing well, but has lost of Director / VP level candidates. Interested to hear about others options in online backup, and a "startup" especially in regards to the low-pricing / unlimited speak screams caution.
Edit: Just interesting on Backblaze and a failed M&A.
"At this point in the story, the Backblaze team is thinking about how to reach out to potential buyers.
Spamming every person at every company was not an option as we wanted this process to remain confidential. Fortunately for sellers, every legitimate potential strategic buyer has dedicated resources for M&A. Usually it's a primary function of the corporate development group, although sometimes it's business development or finance (under the CFO). " http://www.horizonpartners.com/article/things-fall-apart-par...
Very annoyed. Cancelled order.
And why shouldn't I be annoyed? It didn't tell me I couldn't use their software until after I had paid them money.
"
•All Your Data With the exception of your operating system, applications, or temporary files.
•Files up to 9 GB in Size The default of 4 GB can be raised or lowered in the preferences. iPhoto, Aperture and Lightroom use library bundles that will be backed up at any size.
•Connected Drives USB and Firewire hard drives and internal drives connected at the time of the install or added later in the settings panel.
•Not Network Drives Currently we do not backup network drives (NAS drives )
"
"Excluded Files Backblaze does not want to waste your bandwidth or Backblaze datacenter disk space. Thus, we do not backup your operating system, application files, or temporary internet files that are transient and would not be useful in the future. You can see these exclusions by clicking on “Settings…” in the Backblaze Control Panel and selecting the Exclusions tab.
Some of these excluded files include:
-ISO (Disk Images),
-VMC VHD VMSN (Virtual Drives),
-SYS (System Configuration & Drivers),
-EXE (Application Files).
Backblaze also doesn't backup backups like Time Machine and Retrospect RDB. Backblaze also excludes podcasts in iTunes."
Of course, S3 is unlimited too, but the pricing model is different. With multi-part upload and large object support (up to 5TB IIRC), I think it's a pretty good option.
haha...
