Dell set to steal HP backup thunder

It's only a few weeks since HP announced its Electronic Vaulting service which lets customers to back up to remote disk-based storage.

Although it's refusing to talk about it officially, Dell is strongly rumoured, by people that know, to be evaluating the same potential market. If Dell offered backup capabilities as part of a managed service, it would fit in with its overall plans to depend less and less on shipping boxes. But perhaps more significantly, it would most likely be able to leverage its status in the SMEs community, a crucial consumer in the emerging market for managed backup services. SMEs seem particularly susceptible to the message that it's crazy to spend a fortune on your own backup infrastructure when you can pay for it by the yard.

But HP is there first (if you discount the dozens of small startups currently pioneering the idea) and says it already has 70 sites around the globe ready to accommodate online backups.

It all sounds like the sort of battleground that new HP CEO Mark Hurd knows he must win in if Dell's march is to be stopped. µ

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