New Research from Carbonite Shows More than Two Out of Five SMBs Have Lost Data, and One Third of SMBs Never Get Their Lost Data Back

BOSTON, March 10, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Carbonite®, a leading provider of online backup and “anytime, anywhere” access, today announced the results of a study indicating that many small businesses put their data at risk by using physical devices to back up computers.  Forty-two percent of SMBs surveyed confirmed they have experienced data loss. Of those, 32 percent indicated they never retrieved the lost files.

The study finds that physical devices are the most common method small businesses employ for backup, with 86 percent of SMBs indicating that they rely on a physical device for some or all of their backup requirements. These devices include external hard drive (42 percent), USB/Flash memory stick (38 percent) and CDs/DVDs (25 percent).

"Relying on physical devices as the sole backup method leaves businesses vulnerable to data loss and less efficient, since the process for backing up to a physical device is almost always manual," said Carbonite Chairman and CEO David Friend, who has launched six companies including Carbonite and was named the 2010 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for New England in the Consumer and Small Business Emerging Technology category.

Small-business owners backing up data are spending a significant amount of time on the administrative task of backup. Among those surveyed, 65 percent reported that the owner of the small business was responsible for backup.

"Downtime is crippling to businesses; it's critical for business owners to focus their time working on the business instead of in the business," said Friend. "Employing automated processes like Carbonite online backup gives the business owner more time to grow their business."

In December, 2010, Carbonite surveyed more than 125 small businesses with 20 or fewer employees to study their disaster recovery and data backup methods.

Carbonite launched its online backup service in 2006 and in 2010, was ranked the ninth-fastest-growing private company in the U.S. in the Inc. 500 list, and it ranked No. 1 in IT Services.  Last year the company also earned the Tech Awards Circle Gold Award for the consumer/small office, home office (SOHO) service category and Privately Held Company of the Year honors from the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council.

About Carbonite

Carbonite revolutionized the market for consumer and small-business backup services with its industry-first offering of unlimited online backup for a low, flat price. Since 2006, the company has backed up more than 80 billion files and has restored more than 7.2 billion lost files for over one million customers. Carbonite, which was ranked No. 9 overall and No. 1 in IT Services in 2010’s Inc. magazine’s Inc. 500 listing, backs up more than 150 million files every day to high-redundancy storage servers in its Boston and Somerville, Mass. data centers.

The Carbonite mission is to provide a simple, affordable, secure backup and "anytime, anywhere access" solutions for the mainstream computer user. Carbonite supports both the Windows and Mac platforms. Carbonite is available directly at www.carbonite.com, and through international distributors. For more information, please visit www.carbonite.com, or follow us at www.twitter.com/carbonite and www.facebook.com/CarboniteOnlineBackup.

SOURCE Carbonite