In-Depth

Robobak Speeds Its Exchange Backup Capabilities

Channel-focused company looking for resellers for its MSP and branch office-focused solution.

• By Scott Bekker
• February 01, 2009

Robobak introduced the Thin Backup Option for Exchange in the newly released version 9 of its Data Protection Suite platform. The suite consists of agentless software that de-duplicates, compresses and encrypts data at the source and works continuously without taking up much bandwidth by sending only incremental changes to replicated sites, says Robobak President and CEO Ron Roberts. "We are experts at not having to move the data," he says.

The company's name stands for remote office/branch office backup. Those branch offices are a sector of the infrastructure that still doesn't get enough attention from companies or their IT departments, Roberts says. "The dirty little secret is, people don't back up remote offices. When they lose the remote office, they lose the data."

Rapid Backup
The new Thin Backup Option for Exchange allows Robobak to perform backups of Exchange servers much more rapidly. Like prior versions of Data Protection Suite, version 9 needs to make an initial full backup copy of the Exchange database.

In the previous version, the Robobak client in the branch office had to make an entire copy of the Exchange database for every subsequent backup. The backup wouldn't affect Exchange performance, but the Robobak client would need to comb through the Exchange database for changes before sending backup information to the replication site -- a process that could take several hours.

With the Thin Backup Option, once Robobak has the full backup it can use Exchange APIs to obtain log files of changes, shortening the backup process from potentially hours to about a minute, according to the Atlanta-based company.

Channel Options
Robobak takes its products to the market exclusively through the channel. The product has some traction with managed service providers, who use the software as if their customers were, in effect, branch offices that needed to be backed up.

The company also has a reseller program that includes leads, deal registration and volume-based price incentives. "We're looking for resellers," Roberts says. Vertical segments in which companies are using Data Protection Suite include retail, hospitality, financial services, legal, accounting, medical, manufacturing and state and local government.