Symantec have announced that they will soon cease to offer new subscriptions or renewals for Backup Exec.cloud, citing a lack of mobile and content sharing features, and unsuitability for delivering them in the future.
Backup Exec.cloud was first released in February 2012 and was aimed at giving remote branch offices and SMBs a simple method of backing up their data.
The announcement has so far only been made officially to channel partners; Symantec planned to notify end-users in December. However, the email announcement was seen by IDG, and has predictably gone viral.
Despite pulling Backup Exec.cloud, Symantec did announce in the same email that they were working on new “feature-rich” applications, also cloud based, which will offer what Backup Exec can’t. These include the sharing and mobile access features that Symantec themselves admit Backup Exec.cloud was not designed to do.
The shutdown of .cloud appears to come as part of an overall streamlining movement across Symantec, with President and CEO Steve Bennet leading the way in an effort to promote integration of Symantec’s product portfolio. As an outsider looking in, it seems that for all of Symantec’s products, they can’t as yet offer the features necessary for modern businesses.
Like many products coming to their end of life, support of Backup Exec.cloud will continue for another year, until January 2015. However, not many subscribers will be waiting long before they think about replacement products. Symantec will also be releasing information about refunds of multi-year subscribers at a later date, but did mention that customers would be entitled to Backup Exec-on premises (the ageing tape or disc edition of the software) software at a 35% discounted price. For many this will not suffice as it is not an off-site backup product, and therefore can’t substitute for the cloud format.
Users will have to migrate their own data to any alternative service without the assistance of Symantec, something which is to be expected. Customers’ data in the cloud will be deleted after their subscriptions expire.
