SwapDrive vs Mozy: Innovate or Get Hammered by Innovators

I signed up for Mozy the other day. It's a remote backup service - of which you've seen plenty. BUT-

* It asks what types of files (music, for instance, or spreadsheets) you want to back up, then auto-detects new and changed files and offers block-level differential backup.
* It offers continuous backup, even on open and locked files
* It automatically reduces its own resource usage and throttles bandwidth when the computer is in use
* Your data is encrypted during transport (128-bit SSL) and while in storage (448-bit Blowfish)

In short, it's smart. And affordable. $4.95/month lets you back up as many files as you've got on one PC.

I thought of Mozy when I walked by SwapDrive's office yesterday; they're right in my neighborhood. I was a customer of theirs ages ago, but I canceled my $7.50 account when I maxed out my 100 MB limit. They wanted $50/month for upgrading me to 2GB. Can you believe it??

More importantly, while its website brags that it's the first company to offer web-based remote backup, its technology hasn't changed at all since then. I'd be surprised if they're getting very many new sign-ups.

In terms of pricing, web hosting providers have done a much better job than SwapDrive in keeping up with the times. In fact, many shared hosting plans have gone waaaay overboard, offering even more storage space and bandwidth than the average dedicated server.

But as far as technology and usability, the shared hosting product has hardly changed since I first got into the industry in 1997. And guess what? The average guy on the street still doesn't know what FTP is, much less what's in his "CGI-BIN" or what the "Server Sides" include. By the way, "Perl" looks like it's spelled funny, and how do you pronounce "MySQL"? Maybe they're waiting for the Mozy of web hosting - a more advanced service that does more for you? As a point of reference, I'd pay for Mozy even if Swapdrive were free.

So I think web hosting provider should listen to Mike over at Techdirt:

One of the most interesting things a company can do is cannibalize its own offerings. Intel famously does this on a regular basis [which is why YOUR data center hardware becomes obsolete so quickly]. If you aren't willing to do that, someone else will do it for you. One possible approach is to build a separate group, whose job is effectively to act as the competition. Let them develop the next great competitive advantage - and if it destroys your existing business, better an internal team than someone else.

Other ideas I've seen include Google's 20% time (during which engineers are free to pursue new ideas) and Yahoo's Hack Day, during which teams of employees compete to build cool things.

What I regret most about my time at EV1 was how oblivious I was to the outside world. In my mind, the business was all about today's sales inquiries and customer requests. My thinking was, we've got to focus to get through the workload! The problem is, tomorrow's customers might not need what we have to offer today. Which makes your revenue base awfully transient. So set some time aside for thinking ahead - before a new competitor (or several) comes along and does that for you.