Carbonite recently announced the completion of our Series C financing and a major deal with Lenovo. These two announcements generated some great press. But, there are two articles in particular that I wanted to share with you.

In an article that appeared in Mass High Tech, Christopher Calnan reported:

“

Online backup provider Carbonite Inc. recently closed its second bundling deal with a major personal computer manufacturer and followed that up last week by closing a Series C round of financing.

Boston-based Carbonite closed an agreement to provide free four-month online backup service subscriptions for the Ideapad line of desktop and laptop computers made by Hong Kong-based Lenovo Group Ltd., CEO David Friend said.

In June, Carbonite reached a similar agreement with Netherlands-based Packard Bell BV for the PC maker to bundle subscriptions for purchasers of Packard Bell desktop and notepad computers in Europe. Lenovo officials declined to confirm the deal with Carbonite.

Although Friend would not disclose the specifics of the Series C financing, he expects it to be enough to fuel Carbonite before it completes an initial public offering.

"That's the next step," Friend said. "The projections show that it will be the last cash we'll need. (Carbonite is) the type of company that should go public."

Shortly after, Xconomy reporter, Wade Roush published an article entitled "Carbonite Puts Its Online Backup Software on Lenovo Computers, Raises $20 Million" in which he notes:

“

Last Wednesday, the Mozy division of Hopkinton, MA-based EMC (NYSE: EMC) announced that its software will power an online backup service available to buyers of Thinkpad SL notebook computers, the newest line of business laptops from Lenovo. Not to be outdone, Boston-based Carbonite is expected to announce soon that it has formed an even broader partnership with the Chinese computer maker: All Lenovo IdeaPad and IdeaCentre computers—the company’s lines of home and home-office laptops and desktops, respectively—will now come with Carbonite's online backup software pre-installed.

At the same time, Carbonite is about to announce formally that it has closed a $20 million financing round, the third since the company's founding in 2005. (It raised $2.5 million in Series A funding in February, 2006, and completed a $15 million Series B round in May, 2007.)

Both of these articles attest to the fact that online backup is becoming mainstream. At some point in the future, we hope online backup is as common, and as top-of-mind, as anti-virus software is today.

— Alison

Although it didn't come as a surprise, the news about the SwapDrive acquisition has caused quite a stir in the industry.  Yesterday, we were in touch with eWeek and Backupreview.info, two sites that wanted to share Dave’s view on the acquisition.  eWeek published an article as well as a blog post that included much of what Dave posted on our blog yesterday. BackupReview.info also posted a Q & A to share Dave's thoughts with the online backup industry.

In addition, we issued the following press release:

June 11, 2008

Online Backup Continues to Emerge Mainstream as Old Industry Giant
Snaps up Another Established Backup Brand

BOSTON — (BUSINESS WIRE) — David Friend, CEO and co-founder of online data backup company Carbonite, says online backup is continuing to emerge mainstream, as illustrated by another old industry giant gobbling up an established online backup player.

Symantec acknowledged the truth of reports yesterday that it acquired SwapDrive and its companies, Backup.com and WhaleMail.com, leaving Carbonite as one of the last-standing large independent online backup services.

“Frankly, I was surprised that the price was so low, given how hot this market is,” Friend said. “However, that's the danger of being a white label provider to someone like Symantec. It's like the lawnmower company that sells 80 percent of its output to a major retailer. One day they come along and make you ‘an offer you can’t refuse,’ so to speak.”

In the past year, Mozy has been acquired by EMC and Arsenal Digital was acquired by IBM. In previous years Connected and LiveVault were acquired by Iron Mountain, and EVault was acquired by Seagate Technologies

“The online backup space is hot and everyone is suddenly interested in getting into the game,” Friend said. “Symantec realized you can protect your PC with antivirus, anti-spyware, and so forth, but the most important thing to protect is your data. Only online backup provides that protection. No anti-anything can keep your hard drive from crashing or keep a burglar from stealing your computer.”

Carbonite recently passed its 200 millionth file restored and has backed up more than three billion files for consumers and small businesses.

“One by one our competitors have been snapped up by big old companies and we are standing alone as the top independent backup provider,” Friend said. “We’re poised to become the trusted brand in online backup, much like Norton emerged for anti-virus. With a simple and trustworthy product, we are in a position to continue our rapid growth.”

About Carbonite

Carbonite launched its Online PCBackup™ service in May 2006. Carbonite’s industry-first offer of unlimited backup space for a flat low price revolutionized the market for consumer and small business backup services. So far the company has backed up more than 2.5 billion files, has restored more than 160 million lost files for its customers and has a large data center where capacity is measured in petabytes. There are Carbonite users in nearly 100 countries.

Founded in 2005, Carbonite believes that computer users should not have to think about backup. The company’s mission is to provide an affordable, reliable, secure and easy-to-use solution for the mainstream computer user. Carbonite is available to consumers and small business through numerous channels, including its corporate Web site, major US retailers and international distributors. For more information, please visit www.carbonite.com.

— Alison

Dave recently appeared on Fox Business News. In case you didn't have a chance to see it, you can stream it here on Fox Business News. Enjoy!

— Alison

Carbonite has received some excellent news coverage over the past week. I'm not going to post all the links, but there are two articles that I wanted to share with those of you who are interested.

First off, today, on the front page of the Business section of the Boston Globe, was an article about Online Backup. In the article, "Backups are a Breeze Online", Hiawatha Bray discusses the benefits of Carbonite and Mozy. More importantly, he sings the praises of Carbonite:

“

Given their nearly identical features, either Mozy or Carbonite will get the job done.

But Mozy is beset with a relatively geeky user interface and a tendency to throw up unexpected and confusing on-screen messages. Company officials admitted that they need to make their software more user-friendly. On that score, Carbonite is just about flawless. Just install it, launch it, and forget about it.

Earlier in the week (Monday, April 28th), Fort Myers News-Press tech columnist Al Winchell wrote about Carbonite, saying:

“

Carbonite not the least of which is I can personally attest to the fact that when I was ready to download my XP data from Carbonite to my new Vista hard drive, it performs flawlessly. I simply moved the Carbonite utility to my new Vista hard drive, selected the data I wanted to download (had I wanted to, I could have downloaded all 85 gigabytes of data) from Carbonite's Backup Drive presentation on my computer's list of drives, right-clicked on the data and selected 'Restore To.' That's all there was to it.

We are always happy to see the Carbonite message getting out there, because so few people realize that online backup is an easy and secure solution to preventing data loss. I'll be sure to keep you posted with more coverage.

Until then,

— Alison

Yesterday was Earth Day, but on the radio I heard someone say that it’s actually Earth Week and can be celebrated all week long. My question is: since when does being environmentally friendly need to be confined to a set time period? Shouldn’t this time of heightened awareness for our planet last for more than one week? Shouldn’t we keep the future of our earth at the top of mind all the time and not just for one designated week? I guess a week (or day) is better than nothing, but I just thought it was ironic that someone was happy to hear they could focus on recycling today even though Earth Day was yesterday.

Anyway… hearing that made me think of simple things we can all do to help save the planet. I found this NextAdvisor.com post interesting since they suggested online backup as a way to help save our planet. With online backup, you don’t have to save hard copies of documents and you don’t have to store stacks of plastic disks or CDs with all your backups on them. And, online backup cuts down on home storage devices that have to be produced and shipped around the globe. So, if you don’t use online backup for any other reason… do it for the planet. It is, after all, “Earth Week.”

— Alison

I'll admit it: Before I came to work at Carbonite, I was among the many computer users that never backed up their files. If I were working on a huge paper in college, or a really important work project, I occasionally would take the time to put the document on a USB drive, but other than that, I never thought of backup. Now that I work for an online backup company and see how easy it is to back up your files, I feel like I was such a slacker. It's really embarrassing to admit, but I guess I just never thought that losing everything was that big of a threat.

Naturally, being in a position where I monitor media coverage all the time, I see endless articles and blogs about what backup methods are best. Everyone has their own opinions as to the best way to back up your files, but everyone agrees on one thing: No matter how you do it, make sure you back them up! This weekend, I was reading an article on PC World.com about How to Choose a Home PC Backup Method. I thought it was a great read for anyone who isn't sure if Online Backup is the right solution for them. Carbonite is mentioned down the bottom with a few other companies, but mostly it's just a great general overview of Online Backup vs. Traditional Backup.

Enjoy!

— Alison

Hi Everyone,

We're so excited that the Carbonite blog is up and running. There's been some great coverage on Carbonite recently and, for any of you that are interested, I thought I'd post the links here.

USA Today: Carbonite gets personal about backing up PC files

USA Today: Talking Tech Spotlight Video

Bootcamp Technology Show on Bloomberg Radio: Listen to an interview with David Friend

Spokesman Review: When hard drives fail: My experience shows you need to have a plan

I'll try to keep you posted as more coverage comes in.

Thanks!

— Alison