Affordable data backup solutions for SMBs

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Several backup applications are geared toward small businesses, including Symantec Corp. Backup Exec and Microsoft Data Protection Manager. These products allow you to manage your backups in-house. They also require you to set up your own backup/restore infrastructure, which is a backup server with tape or disk located offsite to protect your data against a disaster.

However, what is becoming increasingly popular among small businesses and home users is backing up their data to an offsite backup company. For example, Mozy, a company owned by EMC Corp., is a relatively inexpensive online data backup tool that allows both Windows and Mac users to back up their data to an offsite server, and does not require any backup/restore infrastructure to be maintained by the user. There is standard Mozy for home users and MozyPro for small business users.

Inexpensive online backup tools such as Mozy are the best option, unless your data is so confidential that it's worth the cost of supporting your own data backup/restore infrastructure.