But my days of not caring about backup recently changed. I headed off to SNW Europe in Frankfurt with my MacBook in tow – and like most of us it’s my lifeline. On the morning I was leaving Frankfurt to return to San Francisco I met our sales team for breakfast at the hotel. As we’re talking, I accidentally knocked over a glass of water. My colleagues said there was a look of horror on my face as the water moved in slow motion across my keyboard and seeped under every key. I quickly hit “send” on my draft email and proceeded to soak up as much water as I could with my napkin. I powered down just like always and took off for the airport.

14 hours later I arrived home and so did my reality. A crashed laptop, therefore no data. My laptop was replaced the day I arrived home and thanks to Druva’s inSync I was able to restore all my lost data instantly with secure browser-based access. I’m all about simplicity and ease-of-use. I was back up and working in no time thanks to inSync’s advanced WAN optimization. This made my boss very happy.

Lost critical data is way too common in remote workforces. Here at Druva, we hear stories every day. Someones laptop is lost, stolen or like me, ruined by a glass of spilled water. And yet data shows that only 39% of enterprise laptops are protected. It’s like driving without insurance or getting cancer and having no healthcare. Who would do that? Go figure.

The inSync client for Mac (OS X)  is finally here !

This was definitely the most requested feature and most eagerly awaited.

Although I agree that we did take much more time than initially promised, but this definitely was a much shorter wait compared to getting Beatles on the iTunes store (and I am really hoping that they do announce it tomorrow, Nov 16th)

The client for Mac is part of the new v4.0.1 release (release notes). The Mac version incorporates all the key features available in the Windows version including the app-aware data deduplication, WAN Optimization and search.

The new v4.0.1 release, also offers a 10% performance improvement for incremental backups over inSync v4.0. The inSync server is now equipped with a VSS writer, making it simpler for any VSS-aware backup software to backup inSync server.

Download the new release here – http://www.druva.com/download/insync

When we approached major financial institutions in India, we were surprised to find that most of them did not have an end-user backup policy in place especially for the mobile workforce. Interestingly they had tried the available solutions, but were not convinced with the proposition.

After further dialogues, we could summarize unsolved concerns  as follows -

1. The backup solution should not impact the user
2. Centralized backup for multiple branch offices and mobile workforce
3. Efficient bandwidth throttling and management
4. Low impact on storage

We showcased and proposed inSync solution and proud to say that a large percentage of initial test deployments have already placed an order. Here are some of the brands we are proud to associate with -

So, what makes inSync a favourite with this big brand names ?

Firstly, I think because its Simple.

Although none of the customers explicitly mentioned it, but I think “simplicity” is one of the most underrated characteristics of any product and specially when it comes to backup.

I must confess, not so long back, I personally tried to installed a product which starts with a “T” and ends with “li”. The battle ended after 2 days and I still not sure if I won it I strongly feel, that in this new “twitter” age, complexity is that last thing the world wants.

Simple “under 30 minutes” installation and clear-n-crisp pricing are the two features which have fuelled the exponential growth of this product. Most of these accounts didn’t have to spend more than a day to fully understand all the features and deploy within the first set of test users. In fact for one of the accounts, it was just 2 hours

Secondly, because it comes with some Unmatched Features.

InSync comes with some very disruptive features like -

1. Global source based data deduplication
2. Continuous data protection
3. Dynamic bandwidth and CPU scheduling
4. WAN optimization
5. Search based point-in-time recovery
6. Managed end-point (client) upgrades
7. Bare metal restore

And to best of my knowledge, most of these features are not offered by the existing products.

Third, because its Focused

Most of the existing products were developed to take care of traditional tape backups and now have been made to evolve to “backup servers, PCs and Laptops to disk/ tapes over LAN. And maybe sometimes help you to make some coffee”

We designed inSync from scratch,  just focussed on “laptops”.

For example, a server backup has strict calendar based schedule which doesn’t make much sense for laptops. The server backup solutions are designed for secure and reliable local networks, but the laptop backup solution must be friendly towards the insecure weak WAN links.

Almost all the administrators regularly use 95% of it’s features. And all the new additions are planned keeping in mind the laptop users.

Lastly, The Product Quality

Most of these accounts paid a premium for inSync compared to existing “established” products. But, I guess quality is surely remembered much after the cost is forgotten.

Half way through the quarter, a post on customer wins sounds strange. But I just couldn’t resist breaking this news on the (lately sleepy) blog.

Druvaa acquired a couple of very interesting customers.  NASA is a relatively small Federal deployment, but we are happy to add this brand name to our list of valuable customers. Just the fact that they tested and loved the product against the existing ones, make me feel very proud.

Zee-Turner is special, because this was one of the large accounts of a competing global-deduplication-backup product, until they dumped it for Druvaa inSync. The customer was not happy with the backup performance and the maintenance/training required for the heavy weight product.

I personally met this customer and I insisted that his support staff tries to play with the product while we have our 1 hours meeting going on. The support engineer installed and backed up the entire IT-staff within 1 hour, which was fr them shocking as they had spent over a week learning and setting up the heavy weight.

InSync was simple, elegant and fast. We closed the deal within 14 days

Emerson and Serco are again enterprise accounts we won fighting small but interesting battles.

A snapshot of key customers can be found here – http://www.druvaa.com/case-studies/customers . I am planning to write a series of blog posts to highlight the value proposition offered by InSync in each of these cases.

Druvaa is one of the fastest growing startup in enterprise storage and backup domain. The flagship product Druvaa inSync is fully automated laptop backup software which protects corporate data for office and remote users. It features simple backup, point-in-time restores, and patent-pending deduplication technology to make backups much faster.

The new beta includes the following features -

1. Full PC Backup (with data deduplication)
2. Bare Metal Restore
3. Search functionality in restore
4. Performance improvements for large files (e.g. Outlook PST)
5. Usability Improvements

Find our more about beta and download a free copy from – http://www.druvaa.com/insync/beta

Over 80% of corporate data is duplicated across users. Druvaa inSync uses data deduplication to save “only a single copy” of content (emails/docs) duplicated across users. This delivers 10X faster backup with 90% reduction in bandwidth and storage.

The product uses Continuous Data Protection to create near-infinite restore points. On restore the user sees a timeline view of data and can restore from any point in the past.

Key Product highlights includes -

1. Data Deduplication – Saves 90% backup time, bandwidth and storage.
2. Continuous Data Protection – Timeline based, from the past restore
3. Backup for Remote Users – WAN Optimization for faster backups for remote users over WAN/VPN
4. Security – 256 bit SSL and 256 bit AES encryption
5. On-demand Restore – GUI and browser based restores from any point in the past
6. Advanced Reporting – Six different reporting options for flexible and detailed reporting

Product Page – http://www.druvaa.com/insync/laptop-backup

About Druvaa
Founded in 2007, Druvaa Software is a leading provider of Continuous Data Protection and Disaster Recovery solutions. Since inception Druvaa has released two award wining products products – Druvaa inSync and Druvaa Phoenix. Druvaa is privately held and backed by Indian Angel Network (IAN) and Accord International (HK).

Corporate Website – http://www.druvaa.com/

Sale of disk-bases storage system has already crossed 2500 Petabytes in 2008 and up by 58.1% YOY (One petabyte = 1 Million Gbs). These figures do not include the direct attached storage which comes pre-loaded with PCs or servers.[1]

This is understandable as 1TB (1000GB) storage NAS/SAN devices are now commodity. The top three vendors in this space are HP, IBM and EMC with market share of aprroximately 29%, 20% and 14% respectively.[2]

The overall consumption doubles when this storage is backed up

Energy Consumption

On an average a dataceter consumes 100 Watts/sq-feet of energy and the best solid state storage consumes about 5 watts for 1MB IOPs.[3]

This puts the total cost for mainiating (cooling + power) for 1 TB disk array about USD $2,500/annually. (16c for KWh, and 20 GB average daily usage).

This makes the annual energy consumption of newly bought storage = USD 5 Billion !!!

And backing this 5 Billion dollar inventory surely adds couple of more billions.

Data De-duplication

The data de-duplication technology saves single copy of duplicate data. There are two important aspects of any data de-duplication solution/product -

1. Scope of duplicate discovery – File-level / Sub-File level / Block level
2. Point of duplicate discovery – Source / Target

Most of the storage vendors which use data de-duplication provide block-level duplicate removal at target (i.e. when the data reached the storage). But, its not very difficult to image that source level removal of sub-file or block level duplicates would be much better for two reasons -

1. Sending lesser/de-duplicated data saves time and bandwidth (apart from storage)
2. Duplicate discovey would be much better as you have access to the structured data

Consindering Microsoft’s report on de-duplicate assessment [4], -

1. 20-30% data duplicates are easily visible even in unstructured data source like ERP databases
2. 40-80% data duplicates can be seen in file-servers and mail servers.
3. 60-90% data duplicates can be seen between different PCs. (Just my observation and opinion)

On an average a conservative 30% data duplicate removal can save $1.6B on storage energy and $2B on bandwidth costs and backups.

De-duplication and Druvaa

We see Druvaa inSync as a product/platform to provide de-duplicated (at source) backup for PCs, PDAs and servers. The current version is available for just PCs and we can easily see up to 90% savings for time and cost (bandwidth and storage) for enterprises.

I just don’t see a reason why all storage and backup vendors wouldn’t do it. EMC and Netapp have already announced de-duplcation as additionally licenssible technology on their arrays (target based).[5] No major vendor except for EMC has announced agent/source based de-dup though.[6]

Surely, Druvaa has a good lead and cashing on it

Since inSync used up to 90% less bandwidth, and can perform a full backup 10 times faster than most other software, it is the ideal system to use for backing up laptops as well as PCs

Notebook Backup and Why inSync Works

With any software that is intended to backup PCs on a network, traditionally there was a tradeoff between resource usage and the actual data backed up. Backing up an entire hard drive across a network simply takes up too much storage and used too much of the networks resources to be feasible.

To compensate, most backup software used ideas like file compression, or data-mapping. These ideas are adequate for some purposes, but for full backups the software still ends up being slow and fairly resource intensive. Files are still duplicated, storage requirements are still quite large, and bandwidth is still a problem.

This is where inSync is different. With our patent-pending technology, SendUnqiue, our data backup software uses both: a more advanced compression technology and distributed data de-duplication technology. The software has the ability to recognize files that are common across the network, and doesn’t backup the same files twice.

In other words, inSync uses less storage, and less network resources to back up a PC. This makes inSync the ideal tool for backing up offsite computers (and PCs as well) since it takes less time to perform a backup.

If you take the time to read our inSync Benchmarks, it really means the difference between 3 minutes to backup and a full half hour!