Fast broadband == backup

Gosh, what a long time since I last blogged. Truth is I've moved over to R&D within VMware and I've been working on really interesting cloud stuff that has taken up all of my cycles. I'll be writing more about that soon.

There's a big debate here in Australia on the benefits of the National Broadband Network (NBN). The opposition in government are asking for justification in terms of business case etc. etc. They're also arguing that the government's plan is rubbish stating that wireless is a better option. The arguments go on and I think are mostly inspired by the fact that the NBN isn't the opposition's idea.

I think that the biggest unstated benefit that will come out of the NBN is offsite backup. Yep, you heard it here, the boring business of backing up data.

My 1TB backup drive gave up the ghost a couple of weeks ago. Since then I've been thinking about buying another, but the thing is, I really want more offsite backup. I've got some offsite backup going in the form of other devices (iPhones, iPods etc.), and I'm even using our VMware Mozy backup solution for work stuff.

The things that are holding me back in terms of full offsite backup though is: (i) the ISP cost of uploading/downloading GBs of data; and (ii) the speed at which this can be done (both the initial upload and incremental uploads).

My view is that not only will the NBN deliver more speed (I'm only getting 3mbps at the mo), I think it'd be reasonable to expect larger download/upload quotas over time. Right now download quotas are pretty similar to existing ADSL plans but as more people suck the data down, the market will demand higher quotas. And that means that offsite backup should become a reality.

So the next time you're thinking about the cost of NBN here in Australia (presuming that you do!), think about how much your data is worth and then multiply that across the population!