EMC Corporation has unveiled its software-as-a-service (SaaS) strategy and the release of MozyEnterprise powered by EMC Fortress for online backup of desktops, laptops and remote Windows servers.

EMC also announced several new reseller agreements with business partners to offer MozyEnterprise online backup services to their customers. Additionally, EMC is expanding its relationship with Verizon Business to offer this new set of SaaS capabilities.

“Our strategy is focused on bringing new software-as-a-service offerings to market, powered by EMC,” said Tom Heiser, Senior Vice President and General Manager of EMC’s new Software-as-a-Service Business Unit. “We’ve introduced EMC Fortress, a secure, multi-tenant, scalable SaaS delivery platform providing customers with centralized billing, management and metering. EMC has more than 25 years of information infrastructure management and protection market leadership, and has brought this continued innovation in infrastructure solutions to bear on delivering a new class of SaaS solutions designed to support the enterprise IT needs for customers of all sizes.”

MozyEnterprise automates secure online backup and recovery over the Internet for off-site data protection for remote desktops, laptops and branch office servers. It is the first EMC SaaS application to be built on EMC Fortress, a secure, hardened enterprise-class platform for SaaS delivery.

EMC’s SaaS strategy calls for the delivery of additional IT-based SaaS applications built on the EMC Fortress platform over time, in key areas such as trusted data services.

The company says that more than 500,000 business and consumer users utilise the Mozy technology to back up their information, including General Electric, Pariveda, NTG Systems, Vanderbilt University and Free The Children.

MozyEnterprise is an enhanced, highly scalable online backup and recovery solution that has been made enterprise-ready with several new features important to enterprise customers, including enhanced security through RSA, rapid enterprise-wide deployment options such as assisted activation, auto-activation and proxy support as well as physical seeding up to 2 TB for larger devices and enterprise-class availability and support options.

MozyEnterprise is available through EMC’s direct sales organization with the support of EMC SaaS sales specialists.

The MozyEnterprise offering is available immediately in North America through EMC and its reseller partners. EMC plans to offer MozyEnterprise to its partners and customers outside of North America later in 2008. The service requires no minimum contract and imposes no fees for early service cancellation.

Monthly subscription list prices are include packages for desktop or laptop computers at US$5.25/mo. per machine plus US$0.70/mo. per gigabyte protected and a package for Windows Server machines at US$9.25/mo. per supported Windows server plus $2.35/mo. per gigabyte stored.