Code42 is an American software company that develops and markets the CrashPlan backup software and services suite. Code42 started a project to create a Facebook-like desktop application but ended up focusing on the online storage element, and released CrashPlan in 2007. The company raised $52.5 million in 2012.
Consumers can use CrashPlan's Small Business plan, which requires a monthly subscription to backup to the cloud. Plans for larger enterprises are also available. CrashPlan initially got positive reviews for its pricing, feature-set and user interface, but large initial backups were reported as slow. As of August 2017 the original home plans have been replaced by more expensive, business-focused plans.
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History
Code42 was founded as an IT consulting company in 2001, by Matthew Dornquast, Brian Bispala, and Mitch Coopet. The company's name honors Douglas Adams, who authored Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and had died that year. In the book, the number 42 is the "answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything".
Some of Code42's first projects included a redesign of Sun Country Airlines' website in 2002, a project for the retailer Target Corporation, and the ticket booking engine for Midwest Airlines. Income from the IT services business was used to fund product ideas for six years. In 2006, the company planned to create a Facebook-like desktop application, but the project became too large and impractical. Code42 focused on the online storage element of the application, creating CrashPlan in 2007.
In June 2011, Code42 acquired a Minneapolis-based mobile development company, Recursive Awesome LLC, to support its software on mobile devices. Recursive's employees were moved to its Minneapolis headquarters and later a 10,000 square-foot expansion to its offices was built. In 2012, Code42 raised $52.5 million in funding. The funding was the first distribution from a $100 million pool established in 2011 by Accel Partners to fund Big Data companies.
In mid 2015, former Eloqua CEO Joe Payne succeeded co-founder Matthew Dornquast as CEO. The company raised an additional $85 million in funding in October 2015.
On August 22, 2017, Code42 announced they were shutting down CrashPlan for Home in October 2018. They are not accepting new subscriptions; but will maintain existing subscriptions until the end of their existing subscription period, at which point the backups will be purged. The old Home plans have been replaced by the former PRO plans, which are business-focused, although still possible to use for private purposes. Backups to friends/family are no longer supported in the new product. "As we shift our business strategy to focus exclusively on enterprise and small business segments, you have two great options to continue getting the best backup solution."
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Business
As of April 2011, 80% of Code42 Software's revenue comes from business customers. Most of the remainder comes from consumers and a small portion from service provider partners. Code42 has been profitable each year since it was founded. It grew from $1.4 million in revenue in 2008 to $11.46 million in 2010 and $18.5 million in 2011. As of 2012, the company had backed up 100 petabytes of data and processed 100 billion files a day.
File backup and sharing services
Code42 is best known for developing and marketing the CrashPlan data backup service. CrashPlan backs up data to remote servers, other computers, or hard drives. It is available on Mac, Windows and Linux. There are also CrashPlan PRO and PROe mobile apps for accessing backed-up data from iOS, Android and Windows devices.
Initial backups may take several hours via LAN or days over the internet, depending on the amount of data and bandwidth available, but afterwards, continuous and incremental backups are conducted without user intervention. There used to be a paid option for seed loading, in which a hard drive was sent to the user, so a faster local backup could be performed to the drive and it could be shipped back to Code42 for initial backup. However this Seeded Backup service is no longer available as of around the beginning of 2016; neither is the corresponding Restore-to-Door service, which would allow a hard drive containing extensive restore data from backups to be shipped back to the user faster than an over-the-Internet download.
Data is encrypted, password-protected and stored in a proprietary format. There is also an option for a more secure private key. Corporate users that have CrashPlan PROe back up to private servers instead of Code42's data centers in four out of five cases. The software has an option to create a private on-site backup server.
Code42 used to develop and market a file sharing service called SharePlan, which was released in October 2013. According to the Star Tribune, it competed with DropBox, but SharePlan used a PIN to access files and track users. In October 2014, a revision of the software added features for regulatory compliance like Sarbanes-Oxley and options for a private, public or hybrid cloud deployment. It had a single login with Crashplan using a feature called the "Code42 EDGE Platform", which was improved in December 2014 with two-factor authentication features. Shareplan was discontinued in August 2015.
Reception
In a comparative review in The Wall Street Journal, the reviewer said CrashPlan was their favorite out of the four services evaluated. He said it lacked "fine print", whereas some of the other services charged additional fees for basic features or weren't really unlimited. PC Magazine gave CrashPlan 4.5 out of 5 stars and awarded it Editor's Choice. The review praised it for its user interface, local backup options and security features, but said its mobile and explorer-based features were "limited."
A product review on MacWorld gave CrashPlan a rating of 4.5 out of 5, and Gartner gave the enterprise version, CrashPlan PROe, an "excellent" rating. In benchmark tests by Computerworld, CrashPlan was the best performer in an incremental backup of 25 MB, but the worst performer in archiving an entire system drive, which took almost five days. A Wall Street Journal columnist also noted lengthy initial backups, followed by better-performing incremental ones. Techworld praised CrashPlan for its operating system support and configuration options. Ars Technica said CrashPlan had better features and pricing options than competitors.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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