do studios need this type of service?

As a disclaimer, I'm not trying to sell anything here. I'm just seeing if photographers are a viable market for this service. I'm doing an internship at an IT company this summer, and they want me to find a market we haven't touched yet. The service I'm supposed to be pushing essentially boils down to a really thorough method of data backup (backs up to a server onsite, then also backs up the data via internet to remote servers). It's geared mainly towards businesses (as it also backs up software, and if a network goes down, you would be able to boot from this server with all of your files and software working and intact), but I was looking at possible markets and it seems like professional photographers would have a lot of digital storage and image editing software that could use backing up.

The catch is price. I believe the rate is a $750 start up fee, then $450/mo for every 50 GB. It is probably more expensive than other solutions, but really is better, although I don't know if the things that make it better would also apply to photographers. I have no idea what a photographer's costs and revenues are like, and I don't know how many gigabytes of data one might have, as I am not a photographer myself. Would a professional photographer or high end studio consider something like this? How about if it were less expensive?

Do you realize how much storgae you can buy for $450 a month? It would not being something I would be interested in at all

I can buy 4 1tb drives for that per month and pay for a safe deposit box somewhere. Cool idea, but way to costly.

Oh, 50GB isn't very much for a Pro also.

Alrighty...yeh, as I said, it's more of a solution for businesses with networks of tens of users, as it essentially allows them to plug into a fully backed up (both data and software) server and pick up right where they left off (up and running within 30 mins) in case the main server dies or something. It's not really a pure data storage service, so I can see why it wouldn't be so useful in a low user environment like this when strictly data storage is all that's needed.

With studios and such, there is normally only one or 2 people using the computers with images on them.

Thanks for thinking about us though!

I don't suppose I might have better luck with printing labs? Are there usually more people working there?

I was originally targetting businesses that do wholesale, and photography caught my attention when I saw a photo supply wholesaler.

You will need to increase the storage and lower the price a bit. Do not think in Gigs any more think in Tera's. 50 gig is nothing now. I have more than that in my man bag. You might want to think more like 1000gig and higher.

arti1337 wrote in post #5782957
As a disclaimer, I'm not trying to sell anything here. I'm just seeing if photographers are a viable market for this service. I'm doing an internship at an IT company this summer, and they want me to find a market we haven't touched yet. The service I'm supposed to be pushing essentially boils down to a really thorough method of data backup (backs up to a server onsite, then also backs up the data via internet to remote servers). It's geared mainly towards businesses (as it also backs up software, and if a network goes down, you would be able to boot from this server with all of your files and software working and intact), but I was looking at possible markets and it seems like professional photographers would have a lot of digital storage and image editing software that could use backing up.

The catch is price. I believe the rate is a $750 start up fee, then $450/mo for every 50 GB. It is probably more expensive than other solutions, but really is better, although I don't know if the things that make it better would also apply to photographers. I have no idea what a photographer's costs and revenues are like, and I don't know how many gigabytes of data one might have, as I am not a photographer myself. Would a professional photographer or high end studio consider something like this? How about if it were less expensive?

You do realize there are online backup companies out there that are MUCH cheaper than what you are suggesting here?

Check out Mozy... and their pro division... to see what you are competing against. The market for 10-20 users with a couple of servers isn't going to pay anywhere close to what you are suggesting. Maybe 10% of that...

No, it's far too expensive. I generate 300GB of data per year, but I prune that at the end of the year to about 1/2 of that. I can get Mozy Unlimited for $5/month or something stupid like that, I can't boot from it but I can rebuild a PC in a couple of hours. Not a bad idea, but far far far too expensive.

Maybe if you had someone come into their site & give then a 1TB external drive & install the software for automatic backups? Do it as a one time charge with phone support.