Crashplan from Code42 is one of those services that are so great that I just tell everyone about it. You never have a problem recommending something that has worked so well for yourself and that you know others will really benefit from.

I have always recommended crashplan to colleagues, friends and family for many reasons.

• It is free if you want to do local backup or backup to a friend.
  
• Their optional Cloud backup destination is all you can eat and competitively priced.
  
• You can backup to multiple locations with different data sets, which is a key feature.
• It's very secure when backing up locally or remotely.
• It's automated and just works, set and forget.
• You can access the files you have backed up via an iPad app.
• I have tried other services and they were not as good.

So I was really please when at VMworld this week I ran into the CrashPlan stand.

On the stand was their chief marketing officer and he happened to mention that they were launching an Australian based presence for their service. My accent must have given away that I was Australian, go figure.

Here is what their press release says about it

"We've always had a strong customer base in Australia. Now, with the opening of our Australian office, we’re positioned to serve this fast-growing market much more effectively," commented Matthew Dornquast, co-founder and CEO, Code 42 Software. "In addition, having a local data centre means we can deliver even better performance for our cloud backup customers located across the entire Asia-Pacific region."

The new data centre will provide state-of-the-art, cloud-based backup services to Australian users of Code 42‘s CrashPlan products:

• CrashPlan+ - the award-winning computer backup solution for home users.

• CrashPlan PRO - the innovative backup system for small and mid-sized businesses.

• CrashPlan PROe - the world's most advanced backup and disaster-recovery solution for enterprises.

A local data centre also enables Code 42 to extend its popular U.S. “seeding” option to Australian customers. With this option, Australian customers have the option of shipping their initial backup to Code 42 where it’s then loaded directly onto CrashPlan servers. “This approach is extremely beneficial because it can save our customers a lot of time, especially those with large initial backups or where bandwidth is limited,” Dornquast explained.

Latency always adds some overhead to these network applications so having an Australian presence is going to help all of us Australian users. Plus the ability to send them you're data for seeding is great for those with slow Internet links.

However, if you are already a happy customer, like myself, you will continue to use the US servers, for the moment at least. Only new Australian customers will use the new site. According to the person I spoke to they are working on the process for moving existing customers on shore and their was no timeframe for when this might be done by. Definetely something we need to all encourage them to do. I don't want to start a new service and have to push my 0.5TB back again plus loose all of my regions and deleted files.

So if you were looking for a backup service for your personal machine, you have even more reason to give Crashplan a look!

Rodos

P.S. I will have to see if I can go visit their Australian office and interview their local staff to find out more about their environment. I should also write up my best tips for using Crashplan.