Mozy

Today is National Work From Home Day, which, hopefully, means that you’re reading this from the comfort of your kitchen table or desk at home, rather than from your office.

But, aside from the opportunity to swap your drudge of a commute for an extra hour in bed and your suit for tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt of dubious cleanliness, what else do you give up when working from home?

Times have certainly changed from the days where you basically gave up being able to accomplish much at all.  Remember dial-up connections to an office VPN?  Remember printing out everything you might need for the next day ‘just in case’? Remember telling people in the office which of the company mobile phones you were taking home with you?

The chances are, that you’re saying ‘no’.  Well, unless you’re a certain age and have gone through the therapy to stop you repressing how awful it all was.  Most of us have pushed the bad-old-days of working from home out of our minds because, today, it’s never been easier to replicate the office working experience from home (sans the annoying colleague who likes to eat mackerel at their desk).

Broadband, cloud services, conferencing solutions, mobile communications – and, most importantly, attitudes – have changed the home-working experience beyond recognition.  For many white-collar workers, it’s now an accepted norm to work from home when occasion suits.  And, critically, that comes without the accusations that you might be shirking responsibilities immediately that you’re out from under the eager eye of the boss.

But have we reached the glorious Utopia of home working yet?  Maybe we’re still only part of the way there.  After all, we’re still tied to some of our working tools; albeit that they have become a lot more portable.

Most people working from home today will have carried a company laptop home with them in order to access their files.  They’ll have set the phone on their desk to forward to their mobile and they’ll probably still have an incident during the day where they have to find a file on a USB stick or ask a colleague to email them something they need to complete a task.

Haven’t we just swapped printing out documents and saving them to floppy disks for copying them to thumb drives and emailing them to ourselves?  Haven’t we swapped carrying home reams of paper for carrying equally cumbersome computing devices?  I’m not sure our briefcases were any lighter last night than they were the evening before we worked from home ten years ago.

Working from home in the future should be simpler still.  Already, services from companies like Mozy allow people to access all of their files (whether they’ve remembered to drop them in a special folder for that purpose or not) from any web-connected computer – or from phones and tablets.  Which is one step closer to really being able to work from anywhere.

(It’s also one step closer to sanity when you’re not checking for the umpteenth time that the document you were working on yesterday really isn’t where you thought you’d saved it on that memory stick – but I digress).

With virtualisation technology from companies like VMware, you’re also able to access your processes and systems, exactly as if you were sitting at your work computer, but from a device that you haven’t had to lug back on the 7:13 from Paddington.

As these technologies become more broadly adopted, centrally by IT departments, it heralds a bright future for those who prefer not to venture beyond their own front doors in order to get their jobs done.

And, who knows, perhaps by 2022, we’ll need a National Work From The Office Day.

If you don’t think that the cloud is secure, think again.  Cloud providers, like Mozy, are implementing some of the most robust security features on the market so that consumers, SMBs and enterprises can see their benefits – without the cost or hassle of trying to build them themselves.

If you’re not sure if the cloud is secure enough to protect the data on your laptops, let’s see how the Mozy cloud stacks up against the protection applied to the laptops themselves.

A report last year from the Ponemon Institute surveyed 275 European organisations and discovered that, between them, they had lost more than 72,000 laptops in the previous 12 months.

42% were lost offsite and 32% were lost in transit.  Only 34% had encrypted any data and only 7% had any anti-theft features installed.

Let’s compare that with Mozy.

Encrypting data to ensure privacy

All data backed up with Mozy is encrypted to military standards using AES or Blowfish encryption before it leaves the computer.  For added security, users are able to choose their own personal encryption key.

Protecting data in transit

Mozy employs the same SSL-encrypted transport technology deployed in online banking to protect data on its journey to the cloud.

Protecting against data loss offsite

Data stored offsite with Mozy goes to Mozy’s ISO27001-certified, SAS16-audited local data centres.  Data blocks are split using Distributed Reed Solomon technology and spread across the server array to create redundancy.  The information remains encrypted behind the highest levels of digital and physical security.

The security measures applied by Mozy regularly far outstrip the level of protection that most people and organisations feel they need in the physical world.

You can find out more about Mozy and how you can ensure the security of your data by visiting us on Stand H65 at InfoSec at Earls Court, London, from the 24^th to the 26^th of April 2012.  Alternatively, why not check out this article from the Sunday Telegraph.

This week, Mozy launched MozyEnterprise, its online backup service for large businesses in the UK. With the  official UK launch following some years after the product became available in the USA, many people are asking, “Why now?”

Over the past few years, the Mozy Enterprise Backup Solution has enjoyed many successes – but has also endured some bruises where the market and the product have not always been ready for each other.  Today we feel that the time has never been more right for us to bring MozyEnterprise to the UK market as Enterprise customers worldwide are finally ready to embrace the cloud.  Here are the main reasons:

1. Mozy’s enterprise cloud backup solution has enjoyed years of hardening and testing.  Four years after first bringing MozyEnterprise to market, the product has really been put to the test and we feel its ready for what you have to throw at it.
2. Businesses, even very large businesses, are accepting cloud solutions as enterprise-ready and great choices for their IT needs.  We no longer have to convince enterprises of the power of the cloud – the cloud has proved itself.
3. Enterprises are seeing the complexity of their backup and file accessibility needs explode – from remote workforces to Bring Your Own Device policies, IT departments are no longer able to maintain strict control over the places and devices where people need access to their data, and enterprise cloud backup (specifically MozyEnterprise!) is well-suited to the needs of a diverse workforce.

We are very excited to introduce MozyEnterprise to large businesses in the UK and can’t wait to revolutionise the enterprise with the best backup and data access solution out there.

To learn more about MozyPro and MozyEnterprise and the difference between the two, make sure to watch Mozy Product Managers Jamie Morningstar and Todd Esplin discuss the differences between each offering.

The Encyclopaedia Britanica has announced that it’s printed its last volume as the company moves its business 100% online.  It’s one more example of the demise of the physical as more and more of our lives and possessions are digitised.  Once the last 4,000 copies of Britanica are sold, the encylcopaedia will exist only online, where it has found a new lease of life.

Encyclopaedia use was recently ranked 21^st in Mozy’s list of the top 50 things that Brits no longer do thanks to modern technology.

In 1990, Encyclopaedia Britanica had its strongest year ever for book sales with over 120,000 sets sold.  However, just six years later, the impact of the internet had caused that number to shrink by two-thirds to just 40,000.  Just 12,500 of the 2010 version were printed.

With 120,000 articles containing over 40,000,000 words, the Encyclopaedia spanned 32 volumes and costs around £900.  By contrast, 120,000 text files could be backed up to Mozy for free with our free 2GB MozyHome accounts.

As more and more of our possessions, from photos and diary entries to books and music, become digital, instead of physical, it becomes increasingly important to make sure that we back up to protect ourselves against losing them.

It may seem a shame to wave goodbye to the printed encyclopaedia  but the information lives on in a more flexible way, which we can access anywhere and is much more searchable.  All we need to work out now is how girls at finishing schools can balance the internet on their heads to practice their deportment…

If you have a MozyHome Free account, you’re already able to backup 2GB of data. That’s enough to backup a whole iPod Shuffle or 250,000 emails.  But, what if you’ve got more stuff you want to protect but don’t need a full MozyHome 50GB account?

Well, as a wily Mozy user, you can get your mitts on as much storage space as you could possibly need, simply by helping your friends and family to protect their data too.

Every time you recommend Mozy to a new user, you’ll both get 256MB of additional space added to your account absolutely free.  So, whilst there may be no such thing as a free lunch, you can gorge yourself on delicious free Mozy space simply by helping others to protect the stuff they love.

To make a referral, just login to your Mozy account, click ‘referrals’ in the left-hand navigation menu and you’ll find your unique referral code there for you to share.  You’ll also find a weblink that will automatically log your referral if your contacts click on it.

For more information on how Mozy referrals work, login to Mozy and click here.

The referral programme is a great way to make your MozyHome Free account grow with you.  If you want to back up 85 new text emails a day, all you have to do is make one referral a year and you’ll never hit your limit.

So, if you know a new mum, why not encourage her to backup her baby snaps?  Or, if your friend is into family history, maybe you can help them protect their research.

As Jerry Maguire almost said once: help us, help you, help someone and we’ll help you out in return.  That’s a lot of helping!

And, speaking of help, don’t forget that even MozyHome Free customers get access to our great support portal where you can read a whole host of articles that will teach you how to get the most out of Mozy.  You can even use the forums if you need more assistance.

So, just in case you missed it, MozyHome Free is totally free and, with just a little bit of effort, can keep growing with you.  So what’s stopping you?  Who are you going to tell about Mozy?

Forget poring over a love letter this Valentines Day trying to identify the handwriting, says survey findings.  Forget choosing the perfect red rose at the florist.  You can even forget identifying a blind date by the rolled-up newspaper they’re holding under the station clock.

Recent research commissioned by Mozy, the world’s most trusted provider of data protection and availability for consumers and businesses, uncovered a dying trend for romance in the UK as new technology is vanquishing many of our traditional romantic gestures.

Don’t expect to receive a scented handwritten note from a secret admirer this Valentine’s Day, as over a third of Brits no longer hand write letters, with 18 per cent no longer writing love letters at all.

Mozy’s research revealed that 21^st Century lovers are no longer left with much to cling to as physical tokens of affection increasingly give way to cyber versions, which are harder to preserve over time.

Remember those halcyon days, when making a mix tape of moody melodies was the ultimate way to signal your feelings for a sweetheart? Well, 34 per cent of us no longer bother.

What about printing out photos of loved ones to create a photo album of memorable moments? Forget it! 24 per cent of those surveyed by Mozy no longer entertain the idea.

And just how has technology impacted on our present giving over this romantic holiday? 17 per cent of us no longer make the effort to buy flowers from a florist, preferring to rely on the internet instead.

The demise of paper mail has heralded the swan song for this most intimate of Valentine’s Day acts. Love letters truly played their part in the past, existing as the long-treasured link to first love and long distance romances.

Claire Galbois-Alcaix of online backup company Mozy, which carried out the survey of 3,000 consumers across the UK, said: “In the past, Valentine’s mementoes were things like dried roses, scented love letters and photographs of your loved one that could be stored away in tissue paper and shoe boxes to be returned to and looked over with fond memories. Now, with social media, text messages and email, technology has changed the way Brits express themselves, choosing Facebook photo albums over the printed variety, an email over a handwritten love letter, and a playlist over a mix tape.

“If you’re not careful, these mementoes can become transient and lost forever with a phone upgrade, a computer crash or simple theft.  To make sure that your memories are there for years to come, it’s a good idea to ensure everything is securely backed up online, so it can be accessed anywhere, anytime from the cloud and this is something Mozy already help many customers to do.”

Romantic gestures featured repeatedly in Mozy’s TOP 50 THINGS WE NO LONGER DO AS A RESULT OF TECHNOLOGY

1. Ring the cinema to find out times

2. Going into the travel agents to research a holiday

3. Record things using VHS

4. Dial directory enquiries

5. Use public telephones

6. Book tickets for events over the phone

7. Print photos

8. Put a classified ad in the shop window

9. Ring the speaking clock

10. Carry portable CD players

11. Write handwritten letters

12. Buy disposable cameras

13. Take plenty of change for pay phones

14. Make mix tapes

15. Pay bills at the post office

16. Use an address book

17. Check a map before or during car journey

18. Reverse charges in payphones

19. Go into the bank or building society to conduct your business

20. Buy TV listings

21. Own an encyclopaedia

22. Queue to get car tax in Post Office

23. Develop and send off for photographs

24. Read a hard copy of the Yellow Pages

25. Look up something in dictionary

26. Remember phone numbers/ Have a phone book

27. Watch videos

28. Have pen friends

29. Use a telephone directory

30. Use pagers

31. Fax things

32. Buy CD’s/ Have a CD collection

33. Pay by cheque

34. Make photo albums

35. Watch programmes at the time they are shown

36. Dial 1471 when you get home

37. Warm milk or other hot drinks on stove

38. Try on lots of pairs of shoes on high street

39. Hand wash clothes

40. Advertise in trading papers

41.  Send love letters

42. Hand-write essays / school work

43. Buy flowers from a florist

44. Work out how to spell something yourself

45. Keep a personal diary

46. Send post cards

47. Buy newspapers

48. Hang washing out in winter

49. Keep printed bills or bank statements

50. Visit car boot sales

Mozy is proud to announce the winner of our Pathetic Presents competition.  Conor Buckley won with the mismatched present he received from his wife.

“It was funny but a little disappointing to find out that I’d bought my wife a new MacBook for Christmas and only got some novelty boxer shorts in return,” says Conor.  “But winning an iPad in Mozy’s competition really makes up for it!  I think that Mozy’s great and now we’ll be able to use Mozy Stash to synchronise data between my prize and my wife’s Christmas present.  Hopefully, that way, we’ll be more ‘in sync’ with our Christmas presents next year!”

Thanks to everyone who entered the competition.  We had some truly great (awful?) entries – it’s a good job you guys have such a great sense of humour!

We’re sorry that we couldn’t make you all winners but, if you didn’t win the prize, we’d still love to give you a free gift in the form of our MozyHome Free accounts.  Simply visit www.mozy.co.uk/home/free to download a free account.

We’ll be offering other chances to win with Mozy in the future so stay tuned!

Congratulations Conor!

With temperatures set to dip to well below freezing today, and snow predicted by the end of the week, there’s a good chance that many of us will find our usual routes to work blocked as the Big Freeze sets in.

But, with more of us than ever being able to work from home, Snow Days for most people are a thing of the past.  To compound the misery, Mozy research shows that a quarter of us only work from home when we have to, leaving us rusty when it comes to making sure we’re still productive when forced to work from the spare bedroom.

For everyone who wants to minimise the frustration caused by an unavoidable day (or days) at home, here are Mozy’s top ten tips for surviving the Big Freeze.  And they’re all things you should do today before you go home!

1)   Make sure you know how to access your voicemail remotely.  You’ll normally need to set this up in advance and secure your access with a PIN.  If you can’t answer your desk phone, you’ll at least be able to listen to your messages and get back to people.

2)   Scan the stuff on your desk that you use all the time and copy it so that you can access it from home.  How many times a day do you look at the phone list on your pin board? Make sure you’ll be able to get at the info when you’re not there.  Make sure you include the sticky notes on your desk in this process too.

3)   Sync your smart phone with your computer.  If you usually only do this to update your playlist, take time to do it today to make sure your contacts and diary are up to date.

4)   Check you have the numbers you need.  Sure, you’ve copied your phone list but how many of those people are going to be at their desks if you need to contact them?  Double check you have the number for IT support – if you’ve lost VPN access, you won’t be able to look it up on the intranet.

5)   Take your charger home with you. Yes it’s heavy and, yes, most days it’s unlikely that your laptop will run out of juice overnight, even if you are checking emails into the wee small hours but there’s precious little use to be had from a flat thinkpad if you need it to run all of the following day.

6)   Check you know your passwords for everything.  If you’re not used to using the web interface for the apps you use in the office, it’s easy to forget your password or let it expire.  It can be infinitely easier to get it reset whilst you’re still on your office network.

7)   Pack your laptop carefully when take it home tonight.  It’s slippery out there and you don’t want to spend all day tomorrow squinting at a cracked screen.

8)   Find out what your suppliers/clients/partners are doing how you contact them if they’re not able to make it in either.

9)   Install a file syncing service on your computer and drop all your current work into it.  That way, whatever happens, you can get at the files you need.  You can get a free 2GB account for Mozy to use on our Stash file syncing service at www.mozy.co.uk/home/free

10)                  Lock away your chocolate digestives!  Anyone who does make it in through the snow is going to be looking for a carb and sugar hit to fend off the cold and you might not be there to defend them!

Hopefully, a little bit of preparation can help to make an unexpected day of working from home a little bit easier, so you can spend your lunch break creating snowmen rather than recreating all the work

Mozy Stash is the new synchronisation app from Mozy that puts your data everywhere you want it.  And it’s now available in a beta version in the UK and Ireland, so you can say hello to all your digital stuff anywhere you like.

When you join the beta, Mozy will enable you to install a single folder on your computer and any other Windows, Mac, iOS or Android devices you regularly use.  Save anything from your computer into that folder and, hey presto, it’s synced to all the other devices where you’ve installed the folder.

So, no more cables, no more USB sticks and no more emailing files to yourself – just your data everywhere you want it.

The Stash simple single-folder model complements your online backup so that all your data is available where and when you need it, even if you choose not to synchronise it.

The Stash beta service is available free today for all MozyHome customers worldwide with a 2 GB free, 50 GB or 125 GB plan. Stash runs on the same operating systems as MozyHome and MozyPro – Microsoft Windows (XP and later) and Apple Mac OS X (10.5 “Leopard” and later).

To register for Stash, simply log into your Mozy account page and click the Stash link you’ll find there.  It’s that simple.

We know you’re going to enjoy Stash and we’d love to hear your feedback, so why not comment below to let us know what you think?

Happy syncing!

According to recent research, we Brits received £2.4bn worth of unwanted presents over the Christmas break.  That’s a lot of novelty socks, cheap perfume and tat with vague golfing allusions.

For those of you who feigned a smile of gratitude we reward you with two things:

1) The link to the Oxfam shop finder

2) The chance to swap your unwanted gift for a brand new iPad

That’s right, we want to give you the chance to get the gift you really wanted, simply by sending us a picture of the gift you got.  So, before you send your unloved presents to the charity shop, email us a picture to mystory@mozy.com, tweet them to us @mozyuk or post them to our Facebook or Google+ pages.   We’ll send out an iPad to the person we think is most deserving.
Check out our competition page for more info.

If you were one of the lucky ones, on the other hand, who’s already sitting pretty with the tablet of your dreams, we have a gift for you too!

For the whole of January, we’re offering 20.12% off of our annual and biennial subscriptions to MozyHome – giving you access to all of your backed-up files from your tablet.

So, no more memory sticks, cables or emailing yourself documents so you can see them on your tablet, just access them straight through the Mozy app.

Simply enter the promocode Mozy2012 at the checkout to get your 20.12% discount.

Happy New Year everyone!