Datto expands into file sync and share with a free, one-year service

Data Protection specialist Datto is giving away its new file sync and share service for a year.

The Datto Drive service for SMBs is hosted on the vendor’s 200 PB private cloud within nine worldwide data centers.  The service comes with a global license agreement with open source file sync and share vendor ownCloud.

One million Datto Drive accounts will be offered for free. After a year of service, customers will pay $10 per terabyte per month and a Datto managed service provider partner (MSP) will facilitate the relationship with the customer. Datto sells exclusively through  MSPs.

“We are trying to facilitate the health of the (SMB) ecosystem because it is critical to our businesses,” said Brooks Borcherding, Datto’s chief revenue officer. “We see file sync and share as a commodity market, yet it can be expensive for small businesses. Fifteen dollars a seat is quite expensive.

“We know we are going in to a commoditzed space, so it’s very competitive. We thought we could go into it in a disruptive fashion and make some noise.”

The Datto Drive, which became generally available May 2, is a full software as a service, multi-tenant offering that is managed on ownCloud so customers can connect and ingest files from other FSS vendors such as DropBox and Box. Customers can access, control and manage files from any device. It supports the iPhone, Android, iPad, Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac.

Customers can choose between two models, that both include up to 5 TB of storage. The Datto Drive Business Edition. includes year-round support, and replicates between data centers and the cloud nodes for a tertiary-level of redundancy. The Professional edition allows MSPs to customize its logo.

Datto’s core business is backup and disaster recovery as a service.  It sells a hybrid backup appliance to SMBs for local backups and replication to the cloud.  The Norwalk, Conn.-based company has raised $100 million in total funding with international offices in the U.K, Australia and New Zealand.