ISP-Planet has learned in an exclusive that NovaStor will announce tomorrow an aggressive global marketing campaign aimed at obtaining thousands of ISP customers for its backup software, NovaNet-WEB.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [December 17, 2003]

Tomorrow, Simi Valley, Calif.-based NovaStor Corporation will announce a new marketing campaign seeking ISP and xSP channel partners for its NovaNet-WEB software.

The product is designed to make backing up files routine and easy and is targeted at SOHO and small business users but designed to scale from the family photo album to the enterprise class file server.

As the ISP market becomes increasingly competitive and the rate of new user signups declines, ISPs are looking to value-added services to increase revenues from their existing subscriber base. But ISPs do not have large amounts of cash to spend on rolling out new services.

NovaStor says it understands this. "The message I hear from prospective and current ISP customers is that if they have to outlay lots of capital up front, it's harder to decide to buy," says Bill Ferguson, NovaStor vice president of marketing.

The pricing has been designed accordingly. "You can start with NovaStor at a reasonable level," says Ferguson. "This allows ISPs to adopt a 'let's see how it flies' approach and spend less than $15,000 or even less on the initial rollout. Even an intermediate size ISP can launch it and be able to invest in marketing."

He understands that beyond the cost of software, ISPs have to account for the cost of the rollout and subsequent support. "The challenge faced by even the big guys," he says, "is how to get these value-added services online without having to make both a significant capital commitment and a significant support commitment before the revenue starts coming in."

Ferguson says NovaNet-WEB is the perfect answer to these problems. "The appeal for the service provider is a combination of ease of use and cost parameters that no other vendor in the marketplace is matching."

He says xSPs should aim for an ROI of one year, possibly earlier for xSPs with customers in specific sectors. "We particularly target businesses that have mobile workers who generate data. If a salesperson generates a proposal on the fly and leaves it with a prospect, the manager needs to see it to build and manage the sales pipeline. A large insurance company had adjusters in the field. After the fires here in California, the streets were covered with insurance claim adjuster vehicles. And of course, there are all the high tech businesses where programmers do remote work."

In the future, Ferguson sees an increased demand for backup services. Besides HIPAA, other new laws establish greater scrutiny of public companies will force many enterprises, even private companies, to store e-mail. For example, the accountants and lawyers who serve public companies may be private themselves but may nevertheless be required to retain records of e-mail correspondence with public companies.

Founded in 1987, NovaStor has specialized in data backup from day one. In the past, it required purpose-built hardware, but today the company produces software only. Its software is bundled with tape drives from such world leaders as Sony, Fujitsu, and Phillips.

The company no longer offers data backup directly, although its software is available from the NovaStor website. Ferguson says channel partners are vital to the company. "Over 80 percent of our sales to end users is through resellers," he says.

As this is a business-oriented product, many of NovaStor's ISP customers have webhosting arms or even run complete data centers. Nevertheless, the product is aimed at all end users, even at dialup ISPs' residential customers. "If you have broadband, backup is fast," says Ferguson, "but many dialup ISPs now offer some form of acceleration. If you have dialup, you can set it at a time that's convenient for you and the network."

Ferguson is a satisfied user of NovaNet-WEB. "It's like insurance. You think you can get away without it until you need it. I just had a hard drive crash on my laptop and I was happy I had a backup. It took me less than five minutes to set up the backup procedure and set it on auto for a regular backup."

Turning a product into a service
One company that is very pleased with NovaNet-WEB is St. Louis, Mo.-based e-Backups. Part of a larger group of companies called the Primary Network, e-Backups offers complete backup solutions. The other companies in the network are Primary Network, Hostirian, CDM Sports, Digital Skyway, IntraISP, Evad Solutions, and Primary Click.

e-Backups also offers a commission-based affiliate program with payouts ranging from 20 percent to 30 percent of monthly revenue. The program has a $499 signup fee that gets buyers a website, access to a billing system and "sales funnel," marketing support, training, a DVD archive and 2 GB backup for themselves, and an online commission tracker.

The service uses the Primary Network data center. e-Backup has been using the NovaNet-WEB product for a year. Combining resources from the group of companies, e-Backups is able to offer a complete solution. "Usually the end user has to purchase hardware, software, and colocation. We combine all of that," explains Dave Gambino, CEO of e-Backups.

The company is eager to talk to us because, like NovaStor, it is looking for more channel partners. "We can hand an ISP a tool to get up and running immediately," enthuses Gambino.

Pricing and availability
NovaNet-WEB is available now for a license fee based on the total number of users, with lower per-user prices for volume orders. For example, a license for 1,000 users would cost $30,000, and a license for 10,000 users would cost $150,000.

Free technical support is 6 AM to 7 PM PST.

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