2010 has been a great year for Nine Technology, thanks in large part to the many partners who have signed up since we officially launched in March. We couldn’t have achieved that success without their help and without the collaboration of the several organizations that have sponsored our enterprise.
As I’m looking forward into next year, I’ve come to decide on five things I believe will happen:
1. Major data loss/exposure by an online backup provider. As more and more companies upload their critical business data to cloud-based providers, something will go wrong to remind people of the risks of backing up with less-than-reputable backup company. There will be a Wall Street Journal front page article announcing a staggering amount of data that’s been compromised or lost, and it’s going to shock the market.
2. Price reductions. As larger drives, like the 4 TB SATA drive, become available, online backup and recovery vendors/providers will be able to decrease their overhead and pass along those savings to their customers and clients.
3. Sync/share will become a must-have. Although backing up your info seems like a no-brainer, many SMBs still don’t do it. But sync/share technology is an easier (and potentially more persuasive) way to get these businesses in that habit. The business benefits are more quickly realized from sync/share, so those holdouts might now consider an online backup model.
4. Consolidation. You don’t have to be an MBA to recognize that when there’s a boatload of new players in a market space, some of them are going to have to get gobbled up. I’m quite certain we’ll see a bunch of the smaller players get snatched by bigger guys looking for technology or customer base advantages. We might also see smaller players merging with other smaller players to enable continued competitiveness.
5. Carbonite might quit it with the damn radio ads. Okay, I don’t know for sure this will happen, but I’ve got a long commute, and I’d certainly be grateful if they’d lay off.
Submitted by Gene Fay, Senior Vice President, Nine Technology on Wed, 12/15/2010
