Restrictions Are Coming to Cloud Storage Vendors

A trend seems to be starting to “scale back” on “cloud” file storage sites, due to rising popularity and usage.

Mozy’s move could bring storm to unlimited cloud storage

“Computerworld – Facing customers with an appetite for cloud storage that has increased 50% over the past year, the world’s largest consumer online storage provider said on Monday that it will no longer offer unlimited storage and will increase fees for the limited online storage it’s now selling.

While Mozy may be among the first to change its pricing model for consumers, one industry analyst said most other providers will soon be forced to follow suit.

“Others are already doing things like bandwidth throttling to help control the volume of data being stored and limiting the types of files you can backup, but as far as raising prices we haven’t seen that yet by others,” said Gartner analyst Adam Couture.

Mozy, which is owned by EMC, opened its MozyHome consumer storage service in 2006. Since then, it has charged $4.95 per month for unlimited online backup.

While the new price and capacity points take affect immediately for new customers, existing customers will have until March 1 before they’ll be required to change over to the new plans.

Today, however, Mozy services more than 1 million users, and while the majority of its customers don’t abuse the service, about 10% are considered “power users” who store everything and are eating up enormous amounts of capacity.”