Datto Says Cheaper Sync And Share Makes It Rival To Dropbox And Box

Storage startup Datto has released a file sync and share service (FSS) aimed at small businesses called Datto Drive, a product the company claims can undercut file sync and share rivals such as Dropbox and Box.

To entice small businesses to the service, a market Datto’s founders claims Dropbox and others have forgotten about, the company is giving the first million companies to sign up to Datto Drive an exabyte of storage free for one year (which works out at 1 terabyte per company).

“Current file sync and share services are overpriced solutions for small businesses,” said Austin McChord, CEO and founder of Datto.

“Datto Drive is just one of many ways we’re empowering our partners to help small businesses run more efficiently and cost effectively.”

Unaffordable

The problem, as Datto sees it, is that Dropbox and Box, among others, charge businesses extra money per user for added storage services that just make those services unaffordable to the average small business.

“FSS is a critical service for small and midsized companies, but current FSS providers are struggling to deliver the service at a price SMBs are willing to pay,” said Datto.

“The result is the widespread adoption of “freemium” consumer services that companies attempt to stitch together to avoid the high purchase price.

Datto is taking a different approach by leveraging the low cost basis of the company’s 200 petabyte (PB) private cloud, coupled with a global license agreement with ownCloud, the established open-source leader in the FSS industry.”

Datto claims to price differently, and is aiming for a price of £10 per terabyte per month for an unlimited number of users in an organisation after the free terabyte trial has ended.

Datto already surpassed $100 million in revenue last year, mostly thanks to its information recovery business. With help from other investors, including the former CTO of VMware and other venture capital funding, Datto became a billion-dollar business.

FSS

With that, CEO Austin McChord turned his attention to the sync and share market, ready to use the company’s 200 PB cloud hosted in nine data centres around the world.

Box claims some large businesses like General Electric and Coca Cola, whilst Dropbox’s freemium model targets consumers.

But Datto wants to scoop up the small and medium businesses, along with managed service providers (MSPs), and disrupt its rivals market dominance, a market also crowded by companies such as Google and WeTransfer.

“We believe Datto Drive will be a catalyst to bring together thousands of MSPs with millions of small companies,” said R. Brooks Borcherding, chief revenue officer of Datto.

“Datto is constantly looking for opportunities to strengthen the MSP community and enhance the value this essential ecosystem delivers to small and midsized businesses. Datto Drive not only delivers a unique opportunity for Datto partners, but by protecting data at the file level, also serves as a key component to Datto’s total data protection platform.”

Datto customer Ash Creek Enterprises, a managed service provider based in Connecticut, said that Datto offers a service to small businesses that can’t be found elsewhere.

“Datto Drive blows Dropbox, Box and Anchor out of the water in every way that matters to small businesses – price, features and ease-of- use,” said Mark Calzone, Ash’s president.

“That’s great news for Managed Service Providers, too, because we can start relationships with customers based on FSS and grow to include backup, business continuity and more.”

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