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Carbonite Online Backup Adds New Features for Higher Education

• By Leila Meyer
• 12/10/12

Carbonite, a provider of online backup solutions, has added new features geared towards higher education institutions. The company developed these features based on feedback from education customers and plans to implement more education-oriented features in the near future.

The new features include groups and search. The groups feature enables administrators to group users together to make it easier to locate and manage the backups of those groups. The search feature enables administrators to search for individual users, computers, or groups rather than browsing for them manually.

Carbonite's backup service is cloud-based, so users can access their backup files from any Internet-connected device through a Web browser. Backups happen continually and automatically in the background, so they are always current.

"Today's faculty and staff work digitally and with increased mobility, so Carbonite's anytime, anywhere access ensures they can remotely access their files from any Internet-connected computer or mobile device, regardless of if they forget a research document in the office or left their laptop at home," said Pete Lamson, senior vice president of cloud backup for Carbonite, in a prepared statement. "Plus, considering how many documents they may be working on at any time, continuous backup for all of an institution's on and off campus staff and faculty is key."

Other features of Carbonite online backup include:

• A Web-based administrative dashboard, which is accessible from any Internet-connected computer and lets managers check the status of backups, invite new users, monitor storage levels, and purchase more storage space;
• Ability for users to access their backup files from any device with a Web browser;
• Support for backups of external hard drives and network-attached storage (NAS) devices;
• Support for server backups from Microsoft Windows Server 2003, 2008, and 2011 (requires Carbonite BusinessPremier service); and
• Ability for users to manage their own private encryption key for any Windows computer, NAS device, or Windows server.

Carbonite Business plans start at $229 per year. Further information about the service is available at carbonite.com.