Starting a business. Opinions needed.

[Nmatt1]

I am wanting to start a secure data storage company. The premise of this is, it allows people to store data securely on my HDD OR SSD. How I would do it is. They choose what size of storage they want 250GB, 500GB, 1TB ETC. They would then upload the data to a FTP I own. I would then download it onto the storage medium of their choice. Once all data has been moved I would then take the storage medium off the system and mark it with their name and email and store it in a clean enviroment. Here is where I would differ from other companies doing the same thing. If the customer wanted to add more data to their storage medium I would work out how they wanted to communicate with me and charge them £5 for time for adding more data to their storage medium. Because time is money. Also whenever they wanted their data I would send them the storage medium. It would cost them the shipping and £10-£20 for the company.

 

I would like to know your opinion on this and how viable you think this would be. I can go to my former business teacher and possibly asking for funding for this business idea if you think this is viable of course. 

[GDRRiley]

might as well just do full cloud back up with the ability to send drives in

[MrNehva]

How secure would your facilities be? Redundancy? Data shipping security? Data capacity?

If I understood correctly, you want to make a cloud backup company with an cold storage data vault.

Anyone serious about their backups doesn't do it manually, they are done automatically on a schedule.

It's a nice idea but there are companies who already streamlined the process on a huge scale. 

Check this out https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/30/amazon-will-truck-your-massive-piles-of-data-to-the-cloud-with-an-18-wheeler/

Even Google drive data is saved in multiple data centers around the world.
And take a peek at this https://cloud.google.com/storage/archival/

 

 

 

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, MrNehva said:

Check this out https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/30/amazon-will-truck-your-massive-piles-of-data-to-the-cloud-with-an-18-wheeler/

Even Google drive data is saved in multiple data centers around the world.
And take a peek at this https://cloud.google.com/storage/archival/

 

Yeah - Azure offer similar things with drive shipping for ingestion.

[The_Askinator]

Yeah.. uH, AWS, AZURE, GOOGLE, and many others already offer the service for an a lot cheaper price.

[themctipers]

why should the customer trust you over other companies if they know that you are a one man business and need to manually copy over their files one by one onto a hdd and potentially snoop around and look inside

[AshleyAshes]

On 2/12/2018 at 2:39 PM, Nmatt1 said:

I am wanting to start a secure data storage company. The premise of this is, it allows people to store data securely on my HDD OR SSD. How I would do it is. They choose what size of storage they want 250GB, 500GB, 1TB ETC. They would then upload the data to a FTP I own. I would then download it onto the storage medium of their choice. Once all data has been moved I would then take the storage medium off the system and mark it with their name and email and store it in a clean enviroment. Here is where I would differ from other companies doing the same thing. If the customer wanted to add more data to their storage medium I would work out how they wanted to communicate with me and charge them £5 for time for adding more data to their storage medium. Because time is money. Also whenever they wanted their data I would send them the storage medium. It would cost them the shipping and £10-£20 for the company.

 

I would like to know your opinion on this and how viable you think this would be. I can go to my former business teacher and possibly asking for funding for this business idea if you think this is viable of course. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Glacier

 

This is just Amazon Glacier.

[dalekphalm]

On 2018-02-12 at 2:39 PM, Nmatt1 said:

I am wanting to start a secure data storage company. The premise of this is, it allows people to store data securely on my HDD OR SSD. How I would do it is. They choose what size of storage they want 250GB, 500GB, 1TB ETC. They would then upload the data to a FTP I own. I would then download it onto the storage medium of their choice. Once all data has been moved I would then take the storage medium off the system and mark it with their name and email and store it in a clean enviroment. Here is where I would differ from other companies doing the same thing. If the customer wanted to add more data to their storage medium I would work out how they wanted to communicate with me and charge them £5 for time for adding more data to their storage medium. Because time is money. Also whenever they wanted their data I would send them the storage medium. It would cost them the shipping and £10-£20 for the company.

 

I would like to know your opinion on this and how viable you think this would be. I can go to my former business teacher and possibly asking for funding for this business idea if you think this is viable of course. 

I appreciate your enthusiasm but there are a lot issues with this business plan, and there are other trustworthy companies that already offer a more optimized and streamlined version of what you want to do. 

 

What if your house burns down? Or someone breaks in and steals stuff?

 

How reliable is your internet? Are you using a consumer connection or a business connection with a guaranteed uptime SLA?

 

How reliable is your power? How redundant is your setup against hardware failure?

 

How much would you charge for service? How would the business model work?

 

These are but a few questions (among many more) that need to be answered. 

[kirashi]

On 2/12/2018 at 11:39 AM, Nmatt1 said:

--SNIP--

I would like to know your opinion on this and how viable you think this would be. I can go to my former business teacher and possibly asking for funding for this business idea if you think this is viable of course. 

I'll just continue to pay for Dropbox and store up to 1TB of encrypted data to the cloud instead...

[AshleyAshes]

16 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

I appreciate your enthusiasm but there are a lot issues with this business plan, and there are other trustworthy companies that already offer a more optimized and streamlined version of what you want to do. 

 

What if your house burns down? Or someone breaks in and steals stuff?

 

How reliable is your internet? Are you using a consumer connection or a business connection with a guaranteed uptime SLA?

 

How reliable is your power? How redundant is your setup against hardware failure?

 

How much would you charge for service? How would the business model work?

 

These are but a few questions (among many more) that need to be answered. 

Yeah, one thing is that this description doesn't mention additional redundant copies in multiple physical locations.  This is the default of services like Glacier.  Your data isn't JUST on one hard drive or tape or whatever.

[dalekphalm]

6 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Yeah, one thing is that this description doesn't mention additional redundant copies in multiple physical locations.  This is the default of services like Glacier.  Your data isn't JUST on one hard drive or tape or whatever.

Agreed - that would actually be insane and scary. What if the drive died? What if the OP dropped the drive while about to drop it into a dock to recover some offline data?

 

A proper "backup" service will include on-the-fly live data, usually on a redundant array. That data is then backed up to an on-site, redundant array, and an off-site, redundant array. And if they want to provide cold storage too, then that also means at least one copy in an off-line drive medium (Tape Drive, would be my guess, since it's easier to automate cold storage with a Tape Library system). Ideally, there would actually be more than one copy in cold storage, to protect against media failure.

[Nmatt1]

On 15/02/2018 at 1:54 AM, dalekphalm said:

I appreciate your enthusiasm but there are a lot issues with this business plan, and there are other trustworthy companies that already offer a more optimized and streamlined version of what you want to do. 

 

What if your house burns down? Or someone breaks in and steals stuff?

 

How reliable is your internet? Are you using a consumer connection or a business connection with a guaranteed uptime SLA?

 

How reliable is your power? How redundant is your setup against hardware failure?

 

How much would you charge for service? How would the business model work?

 

These are but a few questions (among many more) that need to be answered. 

For where I live it's secured by RFID keys. The power is guaranteed by the power company I use. All hardware I plan to use for this will be new off the shelf stuff. Possibly going to Seagate after seeing the things they have to offer (Thanks LMG) I would charge per unit of storage EG 100GB, 500GB, 1TB etc. The place I live was built two years ago so it is up to fire safety code in the UK. Internet is a business connection. 

[Nmatt1]

On 15/02/2018 at 6:07 PM, dalekphalm said:

Agreed - that would actually be insane and scary. What if the drive died? What if the OP dropped the drive while about to drop it into a dock to recover some offline data?

 

A proper "backup" service will include on-the-fly live data, usually on a redundant array. That data is then backed up to an on-site, redundant array, and an off-site, redundant array. And if they want to provide cold storage too, then that also means at least one copy in an off-line drive medium (Tape Drive, would be my guess, since it's easier to automate cold storage with a Tape Library system). Ideally, there would actually be more than one copy in cold storage, to protect against media failure.

For the data storage I would have at least 2 copies of everything. It would all be encrypted. I plan on using SHA256 because I know how weak MD5 and SHA1 are. 

[Nmatt1]

On 13/02/2018 at 3:58 AM, themctipers said:

why should the customer trust you over other companies if they know that you are a one man business and need to manually copy over their files one by one onto a hdd and potentially snoop around and look inside

The second any data comes into the system it will be encrypted. I would recommend that the customer also password it themselves so I cant access it. 

[themctipers]

Just now, Nmatt1 said:

The second any data comes into the system it will be encrypted. I would recommend that the customer also password it themselves so I cant access it. 

but will they trust your word?

[Nmatt1]

Just now, themctipers said:

but will they trust your word?

Yes. They can have full trust in me. Any data that enters would be encrypted before it can be moved off the system into cold storage. 

[themctipers]

3 minutes ago, Nmatt1 said:

Yes. They can have full trust in me. Any data that enters would be encrypted before it can be moved off the system into cold storage. 

can

 

doesnt mean they will. Hole in the wall business ran by one person … don't really have faith in that. 

Yes Im paranoid  

[dalekphalm]

1 hour ago, Nmatt1 said:

For where I live it's secured by RFID keys. The power is guaranteed by the power company I use. All hardware I plan to use for this will be new off the shelf stuff. Possibly going to Seagate after seeing the things they have to offer (Thanks LMG) I would charge per unit of storage EG 100GB, 500GB, 1TB etc. The place I live was built two years ago so it is up to fire safety code in the UK. Internet is a business connection. 

Having secured entry is good. But do you live alone?

 

Assuming yes, how are you going to provide 24/7 around the clock technical support? Are you willing to commit to being on call LITERALLY ALL THE TIME?

 

As in, you're at the grocery store - oh but your server just crashed. Now you need to drop everything and go home and fix the server.

 

I also hope you don't have any other job, because if you're at work for 8 hours and something goes down? Well, either you leave work, or your service has an 8 hour outage.

 

The power is guaranteed by the power company? How so? What does the contract language say? What is their uptime guarantee? If they guarantee 100% uptime, they're lying to you - as no one can guarantee that.

 

What if the transformer outside your building blows? Do you have a generator or a full battery bank of UPS's that can run your service for hours on end? You need enough juice to keep the entire system running until the power company can fix stuff.

 

Do you have off-site backups? Because even though your home has current fire safety compliance, that wouldn't help if an arson happened, or if some piece of equipment malfunctioned and started an electrical fire, etc.

 

I'm not saying this can't work - it definitely can. But you're going to either have to commit to some pretty high standards to compete against competition that has data centres and dedicated support staff, or you're gonna have to compromise on some things, and just know that your service won't be as good as the competition.

 

If it's the latter, you're gonna have to offer cheaper pricing, which means it's going to be difficult to make an ROI.

 

Have you done a proper business plan where you lay out all the hardware/software/recurring costs (electricity, utilities, etc) vs expected pricing and expected customers?