Retrospect, New Independent Company

Retrospect, Inc., a privately-held company recently founded by longtime Retrospect team members, announced the availability of its first independent product offering, Retrospect 9 for the Mac.

With features like data deduplication, network backup of Mac, Windows, and Linux computers, and new support for cloud-based storage, Retrospect 9 provides critical functionality for professionals and small businesses that need more than basic data protection.

"We’re ecstatic to take on the development and support of Retrospect, and we’re the right team to do it," said Eric Ullman, co-founder in charge of products for Retrospect, Inc. "Our teammates average 10 years of experience each with Retrospect products, either as developers or in customer-facing roles, and the core members have been with the Retrospect product since the early nineties. We are united in our mission to provide powerful, flexible-and above all-reliable backup and recovery software to our customers and to stand behind it with the best customer support in the industry."

One of the new features in Retrospect 9 for Mac is support for cloud-based storage, which provides offsite backups. Retrospect 9 can target any Internet connected storage that has been configured to provide WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning) access. Cloud storage providers like Egnyte and Internet hosting providers like Dreamhost provide WebDAV-accessible storage that Retrospect can employ for offsite backups. By choosing WebDAV, which is standards-based, cross-platform, and easy to configure, Retrospect is courting consultants and managed service providers who want to provide offsite storage services for their clients.

"Retrospect is a channel product, and we intend to provide increased functionality for our consultant and MSP partners around which they can build additional services around," said Matt Johnson, Retrospect, Inc. co-founder in charge of sales, marketing, and support. "With Retrospect 9 for Mac, our partners can now generate additional business and revenue by easily targeting backups to private cloud storage that they co-locate or manage for their customers."

Other Improvements
Retrospect 9 for Mac also includes a new network backup client for Intel-based Macs. This new, 64-bit client uses optional AES-256 encryption when sending backup data to the Retrospect server, and it allows users to initiate on-demand backups and restores from the desktop or the Retrospect Client preferences pane. End-users can also be notified of starting and completed backup operations with integrated Growl notifications.

Rounding out this release is improvements to performance, task workflows, user interface elements, and reliability. Specifically, Retrospect can now run twice as many simultaneous operations as the previous version; it uses less memory and fewer processor cycles at idle; tape library management has been improved; Retrospect’s configuration file is more resistant to corruption; and client backups and restores are faster.

It also offers a new view of past backups that show only those files that were copied during the backup, making it easy to see Retrospect’s data deduplication technology at work conserving backup storage space.

Pricing and Availability
Retrospect 9 is available from Retrospect resellers or on the company’s web site as an electronic download. Boxed product will be available from resellers at the end of November. Retrospect 9 is available in 11 languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.

Free upgrade period: Individuals and organizations that purchased a Retrospect 8 license on or after July 20, 2011 will receive email notification that they qualify for a free upgrade to Retrospect 9 for Mac. New product and paid upgrade prices from previous editions are listed below. (All prices are suggested retail prices in U.S. dollars.)

• Retrospect 9 Multi Server Unlimited Clients with ASM $1,669 new, $939 upgrade: Protects an unlimited number of networked Mac, Linux, and Windows servers, desktops, and laptops; includes one year of support and maintenance.
• Retrospect 9 Single Server Unlimited Clients with ASM $809 new, $539 upgrade: Protects a single Mac OS X Server and an unlimited number of networked Mac, Linux, and Windows desktops and laptops; includes one year of support and maintenance; additional server client licenses are available separately.
• Retrospect 9 Single Server 20 Clients with ASM $609 new, $409 upgrade: Protects a single Mac OS X Server and an unlimited number of networked Mac, Linux, and Windows desktops and laptops; includes one year of support and maintenance; additional server client licenses are available separately.
• Retrospect 9 Single Server 20 Clients with $479 new, $279 upgrade: Protects a single Mac OS X Server and up to 20 networked Mac, Linux, and Windows desktops and laptops; additional server client licenses and support and maintenance are available separately.
• Retrospect 9 Desktop 5-User with $129 new, $59 upgrade: Protects a single, non-server Mac and up to five additional networked Mac, Linux, or Windows desktops and laptops; additional desktop/laptop client licenses and support and maintenance are available separately.