Zmanda, the not-yet-profitable open source backup and recovery start-up that likes to think of itself – in an allusion to MySQL – as the “next billion-dollar acquisition,” is touting its widgetry for the cloud. It can back up Windows Server and Live applications, stuff like Exchange and SQL Server, to Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3).

It calls the new mojo Zmanda Internet Backup or ZIB and will be targeting it at SMBs, companies with five to 1,000 employees, once it’s generally released.

Right now only a limited set of initial customers have access to ZIB. Its promotional price involves a one-time $50 charge for each Windows Server protected and 20 cents a GB a month for data transferred to S3 and 20 cents a GB for storage used. The itemized billing will appear on Amazon’s DevPay statement.

Zmanda figures its widgetry is more functional but cheaper than online competitors like Carbonite, EMC’s Mozy and Symantec Protection Network.

It says to figure $383 a year for MozyPro for 50 gigs a month in 100MB increments a day for 30 days data retention compared to $1,230 for Symantec and $300 (year one) for ZIB.

Mozy doesn’t retain data for more than 30 days so it’s out if you’re talking 250GB a month in one gig daily increments stored for 12 months. Symantec would cost $5,400 and ZIB $775 (year one).

How much Zmanda intends to jack up the rates after the first year is unclear but right now IBM’s Arsenal Digital Solutions and Seagate’s Evault would be a pricey step up.

Zmanda is also the only enterprise-level game around to back up to Amazon storage and that means files, apps, databases, networked devices and Windows system state including Active Directory. And the Windows machine can be physical or virtual.

It expects to add support for SharePoint next.

The company has also extended its flagship product to pure Windows environments – XP, Windows Server, Vista.

Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) 3.0, which is available now, backs up MySQL on Windows and does live hot backups of MySQL databases leveraging Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) snapshot technology as well as a one-click database restore using ZRM’s built-in point-in-time recovery capability.

Windows is the second-most popular operating system for MySQL.

ZRM 3.0 supports Ubuntu and Debian (both 32- and 64-bit) along with the usual Linux suspects and MySQL-based software packages like KnowledgeTree and Alfresco.

Previously Zmanda just backed up the database; now it can handle both MySQL and MySQL application files.

Zmanda said business was up 800% half-over-half and 50% quarter-over-quarter.

Cloud Computing on Wall Street Conference & Expo Announced
SYS-CON Events also announced today that the Cloud Computing on Wall Street Conference & Expo as wella s Cloud Computing Bootcamp East will take place on March 22-24, 2009, in New York City. The event is expected to attract over 1,000 decision makers, developers, architects, IT managers, and software professionals of every stripe who will be converging in New York City to attend this comprehensive meeting on Cloud Computing on Wall Street.

The future model for providing IT infrastructure and services in large organizations is what many today are calling "Cloud Computing" - a concept popularized by Amazon through its web services efforts. Financial analysts for example reckon that by 2011 the volume of Cloud Computing market opportunity will amount to $160BN, including $95N in business and productivity apps (e-mail, office, CRM, etc.) and $65BN in online advertising.

Any chief information officer concerned with computer system reliability and application availability in the competitive financial markets is thinking one of two things: either make failure impossible, or make recovery very fast. Thanks to virtualization, the trend is shifting toward fast recovery. Wall Street has a vested interest in eradicating downtime and achieving near-perfect uptime - a.k.a. "high-availability" (HA).

The Cloud Computing on Wall Street Conference & Expo is the leading event covering the booming market of Cloud Computing for the financial markets, with experts on financial, high-performance computing, service management, web-scale computing, and cloud standards. The conference will contain multiple sessions on how to improve application efficiency and lower costs by leveraging network and computing resources. Cloud Computing will help you take your applications and platforms to the next level.

Forrester Research analyst James Staten calls cloud computing "classic disruptive innovation where the mainstream dismisses the product and small companies have time to create a real differentiated value." But there are so many offerings just now that what infrastructure architects are looking for above all is a set of organizing principles they can use to guide them in choosing between them all.

Cloud Computing has many interpreters just now - and many interpretations. One thing is certain: it is the most dynamic new metaphor to hit enterprise computing since the creation of the "Web" by Tim Berners-Lee.

Accordingly SYS-CON Media & Events is continuing its market-leading practice of launching full-blown conferences ahead of anyone else by launching its Cloud Computing Expo, to be held March 22-24, 2009 in New York City.

Sponsorship and Exhibit Opportunities
Sponsorship and Exhibit Opportunities Offered on a First-Come First-Served Basis. To inquire about sponsorship and exhibit opportunities please contact Carmen Gonzalez at 201-802-3021 or by email at events(at)sys-con.com. Currently, a limited number of sponsorship and exhibition packages with multiple sponsorship discounts are available.