Mozy Cloud Storage Gains With Businesses

In another sign of the potential for online storage, EMC said this week that its cloud storage service Mozy Inc. has doubled the size of its enterprise and small to medium-size business customer base during the first half of 2008. Mozy now has more than 750,000 users and 20,000 business customers backing up 7.6 billion files to its 10-petabyte storage system, according to EMC.

Mozy's growing traction with business users may be helped by a deal in which its services will be marketed to customers of the huge office supply retail chain Staples. The service, called Staples Network Services, will be offered through Thrive Networks, a subsidiary of Staples.

Organizations using Mozy range from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses in every industry, including General Electric, Vanderbilt University and The University of Pittsburgh, EMC said. Mozy's services are also sold through 2,500 resellers and partners, including Acxiom and AmeriVault.

"As online backup becomes a priority for businesses of all sizes, our business offerings are now enjoying growth comparable to our market-leading MozyHome consumer service," said Vance Checketts, chief operating officer for Mozy, Inc. "Customer growth in a number of market segments is up nearly 200 percent. This kind of growth affords us the ability to scale our operations to support future business and consumer customers who choose us for simple, automatic, and secure online backup."