Adelaide company to commercialise online backup solution

Adelaide company Sarugo has won a federal government grant to launch Memory Box an online backup solution which uses only one per cent of the storage memory used in solutions that are currently available.

Memory Box, which utilizes a community network, has won a $64,000 Comet (Commercialising Emerging Technologies) grant provided by AusIndustry.

Comet is a merit based program that supports early-growth stage companies to commercialise their innovations.

Development of the solution began when five senior software engineers at Motorola's global software group in Adelaide's Technology Park discovered a common passion for creating innovative products.

Consequently, they formed Sarugo with a view to develop ground-breaking products. Within two years they created Memory Box, Australia's first community online backup solution.

Memory Box operates by creating a community for users to backup and store their data on other user's computers.

The technology behind the product ensures that data is encrypted even before it leaves the computer and then split into parts as directed by a network controller to other users on the network.

Sarugo director, Trevor Glen, said several mechanisms are employed to ensure that other users cannot access the files.

Glen said the security measures put in place are stronger than that used by many banks' Web sites.

He said Memory Box also ensures that other users are unable to infect the data with viruses or spyware.

"To retrieve the data, a message is sent out to each part of the original file. Once enough parts are collected, the data is decrypted and the original file is recovered," Glen said.

"Erasure encoding has been employed to ensure that backup can be recovered even if up to 50 per cent of the backup's data is lost."

Glen said online backup is one of the fastest growing sectors of the IT industry with analysts tipping it to be worth as much as US$5 billion within the next 24 months.

"Currently available online back up solutions include purchasing offsite space at a premium cost. Memory Box's low cost has come about from it requiring approximately one per cent of the storage requirements of other solutions by utilizing a community network," he said.

Sarugo will be trialling and product testing Memory Box over the next couple of months.

As part of its commercialization strategy, Sarugo will also be reviewing investment opportunities to grow the company and product.

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