IDrive is probably best known for its consumer and small business backup service, but the company has also long offered Vault, an enterprise version of its software and a matching hardware appliance that companies could install behind their firewalls and in their private clouds. Today, it’s launching an addition to Vault that allows its users to save backups to Amazon cloud storage service instead of the local server.
Matthew Harvey, the senior business development manager of IDrive, tells me that this new service will cost $1,000 per year, which will include software updates and live customer support. That’s half of what IDrive’s on-premises version costs, though you still pay the usual AWS fees for using the Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) and the EC2 cloud computing service on top of that.
The company believes that quite a few businesses are looking for a way to use a trusted cloud provider like AWS for their backups, combined with a user-friendly interface that companies like IDrive can offer their users. IDrive also stresses that its service allows businesses to choose the geographic region where their data is stored in — something that a lot of businesses outside of the U.S. are looking for to comply with their local data sovereignty laws.
IDrive is obviously not the only company in the enterprise backup game. Few, however, allow this kind of flexibility in choosing where your data is actually stored. Still, IDrive doesn’t have the same existing relationships with enterprises that some of its competitors have. On the other hand, though, it does have a predictable pricing scheme and easy to use tools.