Exabyte corporation was the first company

In the mid 1980s, the computer industry was in a great state of change with modems at speeds of 1200 to 2400 baud, making transfers of large amounts of data slow (1 mb = 72 minutes). While faster modems and more secure network protocols were in development, tape backup systems gained in popularity. During that same period the need for an affordable, reliable online backup system was becoming clear, especially for businesses with critical data.

Exabyte corporation was the first company to offer a disk-to-disk backup solution for small and medium business and public institutions in the late 1970s. The company itself is defunct now but the concept of online backup was soon started to commercialize in the small business segment by various small backup companies.

More online/remote backup services came into existence during the heyday of the dot-com boom in the late 1990s. The initial years of these large industry service providers were about capturing market share and understanding the importance and the role that these online backup providers were playing in the web services arena. Today, most service providers of online backup services position their services using the SaaS (software as a service) strategy and its relevance is predicted to increase exponentially in the years to come as personal and enterprise data storage needs rise. The last few years have also witnessed a healthy rise in the number of independent online backup providers.

December 29, 2011

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