SanDisk and Amazon team to give consumers what they need

Stan Beer
Thursday, 03 January 2008 03:15

Opinion and Analysis

The concept is so simple that one wonders why it took a flash memory maker to attempt to popularize it. SanDisk is reselling an automatic online backup service with its newly announced USB memory sticks. How long before hard disk manufacturers also take note of what consumers want and need?

To put it simply, SanDisk's 4GB Cruzer Titanium Plus flash drives, which will be on display next week at the Consumer Electronics Show, will be packaged with a six months subscription to an online backup service from a company called BeInSync with the online storage provided by Amazon Web Services.

Backup to online storage will be totally automatic. Every time data is written to the USB drive it is automatically backed up if the user is online or primed for later synchronization if the user is offline.

While the backup service is billed as free, obviously the cost of the initial six months is built into the US$60 price of the drive, with an additional subscription fee of $30 a year once the initial six months expires.

“SanDisk is offering an appealing package for consumers by marrying both online and offline storage into one easy and intuitive device, letting users take their files everywhere with less worry about data loss,” said Motti Vaknin, CEO of BeInSync.

With backup being a bugbear of many a slack consumer, including myself, it will be interesting to see if SanDisk's new product finds a ready made market and whether consumers will be prepared to pay for the online backup subscription once the initial six months expires.

What will also be interesting is whether hard disk OEMs follow SanDisk's lead and offer similar online backup package deals to system builders. It's certainly a service that consumers need on a larger scale.