12/21/12—the end is near! Prepare for the end of time!

Ok, maybe not (despite what the Mayan calendar says), but disaster can strike any place at any time, and if your customers fail to protect their data, a flood, fire, theft, hard drive failure, or accidentally deleted file could mean the end of their business world.

Powerful new features in the just-released versions of Retrospect for Windows and Macintosh protect your customers' critical data, keeping their business safe with increased data security, flexibility, and speed.

Check it out with our free 45-day trial, and start increasing your profits with our upgrade and competitive exchange program today!

New features include:

Increased performance with Instant Scan

Retrospect's new Instant Scan feature cuts backup and restore times by half on average—back up additional data or run current backups more often, strengthening the effectiveness of your data protection plan. Roll back or restore directories and entire volumes faster, which means less downtime and quite possibly all the difference in surviving or succeeding in a competitive world.

New in Retrospect for Windows and Retrospect for Mac

Flexible and faster disaster recovery with Dissimilar Hardware Restore

Keep your costs under control with the ability to restore to any Windows computer in the event of a disaster, even a physically different computer altogether—a newer system, a repurposed system, etc.

New in Retrospect for Windows

Secure, turnkey, offsite backup and restore with WebDAV cloud storage

WebDAV support backs up to offsite, Internet-connected storage. Generate recurring income for your business by offering private cloud storage that provides your customers with immediate offsite protection. Retrospect encrypts files for transfer and storage on the backup media, ensuring the security of data at all times.

New in Retrospect for Windows and Retrospect for Mac

Ready for Windows 8 and Mac OS X Mountain Lion

Before performing any upgrade of an operating system, it's critical to have a good backup for peace of mind, and to fall back on if it becomes necessary. Retrospect provides reliable protection that bridges both current and new operating systems, including Windows 8 and Mac OS X Mountain Lion.

New in Retrospect for Windows and Retrospect for Mac

All-new Retrospect Client delivers resource and cost savings

New enhancements include better integration with the OS, end-user backup and restore on-demand, and administrator control over end-user features, such as marking private files and stopping a backup in progress.

New in Retrospect for Windows and Retrospect for Mac

Upgrade your customers today!

Download our Retrospect reseller kit with everything you need to create your own upgrade campaign.

Some small businesses rely on backup software that is designed for the home user, offering little in the way of configuration and flexibility. While this level of protection may be cheap (or even free), it can cost them if their business suffers from a theft or a catastrophe like a fire or flood.

Does their backup software really meet their business’s needs?

Retrospect Backup and Recovery software provides small and midsize businesses with the reliability, ease of use, power, and flexibility they need to protect critical data on their Macs and Windows PCs—all on a small business budget.

Retrospect is designed for office environments, backing up multiple platforms to multiple destinations and providing choices on media, scheduling, security, and file selection.

With Retrospect, you can...

• Back up Windows, Macintosh, and Linux computers with a Macintosh or Windows computer acting as a backup server.
• Protect servers, business-critical applications, desktops and notebooks with a single, easy to use product.
• Back up to and restore from tape, hard disk drives and network-attached disk.
• Back up from or to offsite cloud storage with WebDAV capabilities (Mac).
• Manage multiple backup servers remotely from a single screen.
• Deduplicate data to maximize storage usage by copying only unique files—even across multiple computers—to the backup media.
• Choose which files to back up based on a wide variety of attributes, including name, extension, path, size, and even file system.
• Back up to multiple destinations, even designating different disks for different tasks or content.
• Ensure the security of your data with optional password protection and the highest level of U.S. Government standard 128- or 256-bit AES encryption.
• Manage your backup system remotely with the free Retrospect iPhone and iPad app.

Update, enhance, or build a business data protection plan with Retrospect!

Data is the “life’s blood” of any business—always moving and changing, it keeps companies alive. To protect businesses from the costly and damaging effects of data loss, data must be carefully safeguarded, whether against virus, theft, or a natural disaster. Imagine trying to operate without financial records, customer records, contracts, or intellectual property like designs, code, etc... It is unlikely that a business survive the loss of such critical data; statistically, the majority of businesses that suffer major data loss close within 24 months, many of those surviving less than 6 months.

Retrospect backup and disaster recovery solution helps protect an organization’s data from these disruptive events, allowing daily operations to continue in the event of a disaster. With built-in data protection strategies that can protect entire networks of computers—including servers and individual users’ PCs—Retrospect makes sure that an organization’s data is safe should the unforeseen occur.

Use Retrospect as a vital part of your business continuity plan. Follow these general data protection tips to give yourself peace of mind knowing you are prepared and doing the best to protect your business, the people you work with, and your customers.

1. Think redundancy (use RAID)

   Storing data on disks without any redundancy leaves you vulnerable to hardware failure—a failed disk could cause the loss of all the vital business information created since your last backup. Storing data on a disk array with built-in redundancy (known as a redundant array of independent disks or RAID) provides the first level of protection against data loss. If you suffer from a disk or component failure, the redundant drive will continue to operate without interruption. But having data stored on a RAID isn’t the same as a backup, so don’t stop here!

2. Take advantage of shared storage to consolidate

   A shared storage solution like a network-attached storage (NAS) device is efficient and convenient. A NAS eliminates the need to constantly monitor storage on individual servers, avoiding the expense and inconvenience of acquiring and balancing storage on multiple systems. Use Retrospect to monitor storage for multiple computers from one central location, and allocate or reassign disk space to multiple computers quickly and conveniently based on each computer’s requirements without having to purchase new disks for each.

3. Be sure your storage can scale to meet your needs

   As your business grows, so does the amount of data needed for day-to-day activities. Is your storage scalable? Will your storage solution grow as your company expands? A business needs the flexibility to quickly and easily increase disk space for shared storage or backup capabilities. To provide backup storage for additional servers, desktops, or notebooks, select a storage option that enables you to easily add capacity as available storage space is consumed.

4. Choose iSCSI or Fibre Channel

   Whether you opt to use iSCSI or Fibre Channel for shared storage devices depends on the needs of your business. iSCSI is a natural choice for most small businesses. It keeps costs down by using commodity cables with standard GigE ports and switches, which are also easier to set up and configure. Fibre Channel switches and cables are more expensive and require more expertise to install and manage, but Fibre Channel is a better choice for environments that demand a consistently high level of performance.

5. Protect everything

   Select business-class backup software, such as Retrospect. Backup software should protect all your computers, support Mac, Windows, and Linux operating systems, and back up all the data necessary to restore any computer completely in the event of a failure. Some backup strategies protect only file servers and business-critical application servers. A complete backup strategy protects servers, desktops, and notebooks, which can remain unprotected because they are often not connected to the network during scheduled daily backups. Protection should also encompass operating systems, device drivers, applications, application settings, and user settings. When a computer fails, you shouldn’t be forced to spend countless hours downloading and installing applications and device drivers, and then re-configuring settings—your backup and recovery software should make it easy to recover all your applications and settings.

6. Select software that makes backup and recovery easy

   Robust data protection doesn’t have to be complex. Retrospect is easy to set up and manage, with intuitive wizards and assistants that streamline setup, schedule backups, and perform restores. Ongoing backup operations require minimal monitoring, and built-in email notification sends alerts if necessary. Patented dynamic scheduling recognizes computers that haven’t been backed up and prioritizes them automatically, ensuring that all of your computers are protected. Retrospect also provides easy-to-understand backup reports that make the backup review process painless.

7. Utilize disk for fast backups and rapid restores

   Back up to local disk arrays on a daily basis for the fastest backups, and to keep your data available readily at hand for quick restores. For offsite storage and disaster recovery, consider a secondary disk set that can be physically stored offsite and updated on a regular basis. Even tape media stored offsite will provide faster system restores than a cloud-based system.

8. Enable users to restore their own files

   One of the most common restore scenarios involves a user who loses or inadvertently deletes a single important file and needs to recover that file quickly. Free up administration time by choosing backup software with a user-initiated restore capability. This is especially useful for organizations that protect a large number of users’ computers.

9. Maintain offsite data protection

   Make at least two copies of your backup media and store one in a secure, offsite location to guard against catastrophic events such as fire, flood, earthquake, or other disasters that will destroy onsite backup media. Rotate your onsite/offsite backup media at regular intervals, bringing the offsite media up to date when you bring it onsite, or replicate your backups to cloud storage. Choose backup software like Retrospect that eliminates complex backup media rotation strategies and automatically updates media brought back onsite. Keep one set onsite for backups and restores. Send the other offsite for safety.

10. Protect sensitive data with strong AES encryption

    Protect your most critical files with 128-bit or 256-bit AES encryption to prevent unauthorized individuals from accessing information if backup media is lost, stolen, or misplaced. AES encryption also ensures compliance with an increasing number of government and industry regulations designed to protect private information and prevent identify theft. These regulations are far-reaching and come with stiff penalties for non-compliance. The need for AES encryption of backup data is not limited to large businesses, organizations, and government agencies that store personal information. Small businesses are affected as well, because many entities require partners, contractors, and other business associates to ensure that backup data is securely protected.

Backing up to cloud storage with Retrospect 9 for the Macintosh is profitable, secure and easy!

During these times of economic unrest, finding ways to grow your business while at the same time saving your increasingly budget-conscious customers' money, can be very difficult. With Retrospect 9's new cloud storage support, you have the opportunity to do both.

Cloud backup and recovery is rapidly becoming a standardized part of any data solution, and has two important advantages for your customers:

1. Offsite backup is a critical part of any well thought-out backup plan. Retrospect's cloud storage support automates the off-site backup process—ensuring that offsite backup happens on a regular basis, and removing the need to physically carry storage media to a secondary location.
2. Cloud backup presents cost savings benefits through reduction in the need for physical storage like tape libraries and hard drives, through the removal of need for any sort of service to move the storage media offsite, and reduction in time spent managing the process.

Retrospect 9's new cloud storage support gives you the opportunity to generate continued revenue while delivering all of the advantages of cloud backup to your customers when you offer off-site backup, recovery, and storage services. In addition, Retrospect delivers a higher level of security for critical data, with built-in AES 256 encryption to protect your customers' files as they are transferred to your designated offsite storage or restored back their computers.

Setting up off-site cloud storage with Retrospect 9 is easy and can be done with minimal investment. With a few simple selections in our friendly user interface, you can be up and running—making use of your existing storage or leasing storage space from cloud data centers on a flexible basis, increasing it as your needs grow.

Here is a snapshot on how simple off-site cloud storage is to set up using Retrospect 9 for the Mac:

Adding a WebDAV share to Retrospect 9 to enable cloud backup

1. After you have your WebDAV server set up, go to the 'Sources' window and click 'Add'.

   

2. Click the 'Share' icon in the top bar, and type in the http address of your WebDAV server and share. Add your share username and password, and click 'Add'.

   

3. Once you have completed this step, the share will appear in your 'Sources' window.

   

4. Add the WebDAV share as a member to your Media Set, and you are set up to back up to the cloud. To speed cloud operations by only copying a subset of data to WebDAV storage, use Retrospect’s comprehensive Rules to filter what kind of files Retrospect will copy. (See Working with Rules in the Retrospect User’s Guide.)