A good hotel concierge knows where all the good restaurants and entertainment is, and they can also steer you away from a bad meal or a wasted cover charge. That’s exactly what the Backup Concierge service will do for you and your backup and recovery environment – by giving you access to the collective wisdom of on-staff backup and recovery experts and real end-users just like yourself. Please note that truthinit.com is completely free of advertisements or vendor-sponsored content of any kind. Our only compensation will be from your contributions – not kickbacks from any vendors for recommending their products. Most industry sources of information are subsidized (and therefore tainted) by vendor money, but not Truth in IT.
The Backup Concierge service first gives you complimentary access to our on-staff backup and recovery experts, such as W. Curtis Preston. Subscribers will be able to schedule one-on-one interviews with our experts where you can explain your environment to them and have them recommend a customized course of action just for you. These interviews will be recorded, any identifying information about your company will be removed, and your voice will be masked. They will then be available as podcasts for other subscribers to learn from. (Private, non-recorded, traditional consulting sessions are available for an additional fee.)
Our backup experts also want to be intimately involved with any proof-of-concept (POC) tests conducted in your environment. We will provide you with detailed test plans that make sure that you’re testing all the right things in your POC, and standardize the results so they can be compared with others. In some cases, we may even offer to come on site and conduct the tests for you – at no additional cost – due to the value that the results of those tests will have to our subscribers. The results of these tests can then be supplied back to other Backup Concierge subscribers. This gives us real tests by real people in real environments, not pie-in-the-sky vendor-sponsored lab tests that often focus only on the good.
Next you have access to our exclusive and private end-user community where no vendors are allowed. Interact anonymously and privately with verified end-users who are using the very products you are interested in. To ensure anonymity and openness, interactions with other end-users are done via the following features of truthinit
- Community Groups
- Easily identify others using the products you are interested in
- Private Messages
- Anonymously ask other users private questions w/o using email
- Forums
- Anonymously ask public questions of other subscribers.
- (Questions & answers can only be seen by subscribers.)
The Backup Concierge service also gives you access to our formal, documented content, including:
- Unfiltered product research (by our experts)
- Unfiltered product reviews (by our experts)
- Head-to-head testing (by our experts)
- Field test reports (by your fellow end-users)
- Unfiltered podcasts of interviews with anonymous (but verified) end-users
- Unfiltered podcasts of interviews with providers of technology.
All of this for only $999 per year!
The Backup Concierge service is for end-users only – no vendors allowed. Types of companies that are excluded from this plan include: Hardware OEMS (e.g. IBM), Software ISVs (e.g. Symantec), VARs/integrators (e.g. Chi Corp.), IT industry consulting companies (e.g. GlassHouse), IT outsourcing companies (e.g. EDS), and Cloud/service providers (e.g. eVault). By subscribing to this plan, you are contractually agreeing that you do not work for any of these types of companies. This restriction applies regardless of your position at your company. If there is any concern that we might consider you a vendor and not an end-user, please contact us first.
If you'd like to sign up for our new service, all you have to do is click here to register and select one of our three payment options (Credit Card, Paypal, or P.O./Check) for your $999 annual subscription fee.