New weapons for the cloud computing battle

KineticD/Data Deposit Box

Data Deposit Box revealed last month that it would change the name of the company to KineticD. Whatever you wish to call it, we think its flagship Data Deposit Box storage solution is a strong one for many enterprises, including small or midsize enterprises looking to migrate to cloud solutions a little at a time.

With a quick, "out-of-the-box" installation, Data Deposit Box offers the ability to automate cloud-based data backup. Its management console is straightforward and simple, yet provides clear visibility into a network's data sets that require backup and whether scheduled backups have been successful. The CRN Test Center evaluated the service over several days and found it provided a level of uptime and reliability that would be fine for most enterprises.

Like the other solutions we viewed, Data Deposit Box provides password-level administration security. Through the application-based management console, we were able to manage users, reports, get a networkwide view of data being managed through the service, examine daily activity and establish e-mail alerts for a variety of activities. While not as robust as Amazon's storage and offering, it's aimed at a different level of enterprise and business strategy--namely, entry-level storage and backup rather than data application development and deployment.

For a deployment of 28 computers, five servers and 90 GB of total data, KineticD estimates a monthly cost of US$180 (or US$2 per GB per month.)

The Bottom Line: What all of these solutions prove is that there is no, single cookie-cutter approach to enterprise cloud IT--at least not yet. For VARs, there remains the very real possibility of delivering a client too much or not enough compute capability or storage capacity, or too much or not enough headroom. For now, then, best practices will include a full audit of an enterprise's data usage, compliance requirements, business road map and budget. Most enterprises are taking a slower approach to migrating data and compute resources to the cloud, and for good reason. There is a wide gulf between simple storage and backup and robust application development and delivery to and from the cloud.

While companies like Microsoft and Amazon.com provide resources and infrastructure for longer-term and more robust cloud solutions--and it will take time for developers and technology providers to get there-companies like KineticD, EMC and Ctera provide half-steps that we can clearly recommend.