3 Things You Can Do with Your Backup Data – Interview with Ethan Oberman, CEO of SpiderOak

Article first written for, and published as I’ve Backed Up My Files, Now What? Interview with Ethan Oberman, CEO of SpiderOak on Technorati.

World Backup Day is March 31st. Now in its second year, the event is an annual Internet-wide promotion of data backups. So many of us know we really should backup all our precious baby videos, financial documents, and love letters, but this event brings about greater awareness and a reminder of it. As the folks at WBD advise, “It’s not a question of if your drive will fail, it’s when.”  And with advancements in cloud technology it’s easier than ever before.

Okay, so I’m in–March 31st is World Backup Day and I’m taking advantage of cloud-based storage provider, SpiderOak’s promotion offering 5GB of free storage – for life. I’ve signed up for free and entered the WORLDBACKUPDAY where it says ‘buy more space,’ and my files are stored. Now what?

According to Ethan Oberman, CEO of SpiderOak, there’s a whole lot more you can do.” Generation one is the first step, and that’s making sure you backup your data,” says Ethan, “and World Backup Day does a good job at bringing awareness to that.” But, explains Ethan, there’s a second step, “Generation two is the emphasis on content use, ‘okay, now that it’s backed up, what do I do with it?'” There are three points that supplement the concept of backup.

1. Accessibility – The cloud offers more seamless accessibility to our files.  Now that my data is aggregated at one place, I can access it anywhere within the SpiderOak network, and from different devices.
2. Synchronization – Cloud storage done right can put an end to the days where I have some photos on one computer, but not on another. Everything is stored in the network, and pushed down to other locations and devices.
3. Sharing – We’re so accustomed to attaching files and sending them through email as our primary method of sharing. But it’s really not all the efficient and for either the sender or the recipient. With my files in SpiderOak’s cloud, I can separate and share what I like in “share rooms.” Now that’s nice.