Mozy brings online backup service to the UK

Mozy Pro costs £3.99 per month for each desktop or laptop

Mozy has launched its namesake online backup service in the UK and Europe, providing consumers and small businesses with continuous backup of data files to a secure online repository.

Available immediately, the Mozy service provides an automatic backup of vital information for the PC and Mac, enabling users to recover data if their hard disk has crashed, their laptop has been stolen or destroyed, or if they have simply deleted a file by accident.

The service has been available in the US for several years, but Mozy now has a European presence with datacentres located in the European Union, local domain names (the .uk site goes live today), and subscription pricing in European currencies.

Keeping a backup of data is a vital process, but is notoriously neglected by consumers and businesses. The problem is that it is time consuming and complex, and Mozy was created to solve this, using a secure off-site location for backup data at the same time, the firm explained.

"We're trying to provide an automated backup solution where people don't have IT professionals to take care of this process for them," said Russ Stockdale, chief marketing officer for Mozy, which is owned by enterprise storage firm EMC.

This is accomplished using a "set and forget" model, according to Stockdale. Users select the file types and/or folders they wish to protect, and the Mozy client on their PC makes a complete backup to Mozy's datacentre followed by regular updates with any new files or changes, so long as the system has an internet connection.

Mozy's client software is light on system resources, according to Steve Wood, Mozy's technical consultant for EMEA, and users "won't even notice it operating ", he said.

All data is encrypted on the user's computer before transmission, and stored at the datacentre in encrypted form. Mozy uses a 448-bit Blowfish algorithm by default, but "those with security concerns" can choose 256-bit AES and opt to provide their own key, according to Mozy.

"We never see any unencrypted content," said Stockdale.

If a disaster occurs, customers can restore all their data using the Mozy client or via a web browser, restoring individual files or folders, or even a previous version of a single file.

Mozy is available in two versions: Mozy Home for consumers and Mozy Pro for businesses. Mozy Home protects a single system for £4.99 per month, with no limits on the volume of data stored. A trial version of Mozy Home is available at no cost, limited to 2GB of data.

Mozy Pro costs £3.99 per month for each desktop or laptop, while servers cost £6.99 per month. There is also an additional charge of 50p per gigabyte stored for Mozy Pro subscribers.

Mozy Pro customers additionally get an admin console that lets a manager control how the application behaves on each machine, governing what files are backed up, which are excluded (such as MP3 files) and when backups should be scheduled.

Mozy supports Windows versions from 2000 up to Windows 7, and Mac OS X 10.6, 10.5 and 10.4.