The Company behind the World’s Easiest, Award-Winning Automatic Backup Solution.
Inspired by the fact that only 15% of people backup their computers, when 100% should, Clickfree Automatic Backup systems and accessories were developed and later patented. Clickfree Automatic Backup products are and will continue to be the easiest to use backup systems in the world. Just plug them in and the patented Easy Run feature gets to work backing up photos, music, email and data effortlessly. You should never have to do anything more than just sit back and relax.
Clickfree™ Automatic Backup is the world’s first, and leading innovator, in developing easy-to-use computer backup solutions for home and small business people today, and will continue to do so well into the future.
Goal
To get every person that saves "loved" content such as photos and music to a computer to, or any Small Business that "highly" values their content, to know and understand that Clickfree Automatic Backup is the easiest way to protect the created content that they cherish.
Benefit
With Clickfree people can have the Peace of Mind knowing that what they love is easily protected, and if necessary easily restored.
Today, 100% of people know they should backup their computers, while only a fraction of us regularly do backup. Inspired by this knowledge, and the insight that people do not regularly backup due to a belief that it is too complicated or time-consuming, Clickfree Automatic Backup products are built to be 'Easier to use than things we already think are Easy’ such as:
- Taking a digital photo or transferring a photo to a computer
- Uploading photos to Facebook
- Opening a Twitter account
- Downloading music or apps from iTunes
- Accessing online banking
- Writing and sending an email
Rated #1 by consumers… Nothing is Easier than Clickfree™.
In 2005, our founder Ian Collins' Mother purchased her first personal computer and as a gift he bought her a new digital camera. Immediately upon doing so he worried that she was now at risk of losing all her precious photos that she would store on her computer. He knew that traditional backup products would be too complicated for her and that she would not bother to backup if the solution was not easy.
Realizing that his Mother, and many others like her, needed a fool-proof automatic backup system, Clickfree™ Automatic Backup was invented. Today millions of users are now protected with Clickfree™ Automatic Backup as a result of a son’s love and concern to protect the memories that his Mother cherished.
Our Foundation
Storage Appliance Corporation is a Canadian controlled private corporation incorporated in Ontario, Canada in February 2005. Total venture capital raised is over $36 million, with approximately 70% of the fully diluted shares held by six key parties including Company management, Tandem Expansion Fund, Jefferson Partner and Intel Capital Corporation.
In the past 4 years, the Company has had annual compound growth of over 80% in retail and web revenues, with total gross revenues over $30 million. In 2010, the Company was named as the fastest growing technology company in Canada by Deloitte & Touche.
Bryan McLoed
CEO
Bryan McLeod is an accomplished entrepreneur with a keen understanding of what it takes to establish new businesses and quickly build sales channels that successfully deliver products and services to consumers. His first two technology start-ups one in consumer electronics and the other in medical electronic went on to become leaders in their respective markets. In 2004, Bryan sold his most successful endeavour, Intrigue Technologies inventors of the Harmony universal remote control, to Logitech Inc. Bryan began his business career as a Canadian Chartered Accountant with a specialization in auditing and Canadian & International Tax law. He also holds degrees in both Commerce and Economics from the University of Toronto.
Ian Collins
Founder and President
Ian has spent the last 15 years founding technology ventures. Ian started his career as an engineer in the wireless industry working for Canada's largest mobile operators. Ian founded his first company, Wyrex Communications Inc. in 1993. Wyrex provided engineering services to wireless operators around the world during the 2G buildouts of the 90s. Wyrex grew to over 50 engineers with a focus on back office network deployment and planning. During that time Ian founded his second company, Wysdom Inc. with the mission to "take dotcoms wireless". Wysdom grew during the boom years of 1998 to 2000 with over $80 million of venture capital to more than 300 employees and boasted many of the top dotcoms as customers. Ian also founded another company in 1999 called Web2Mobile, one of the world's first wireless content portals.
After a short retirement in 2001/2002, Ian founded Mobile Diagnostix in 2003. Mobile Diagnostix was focused on solving the problem of mobile data customer care facing the world's wireless operators. With it's flagship product SmartCare, Mobile Diagnostix provided customer service solutions to some of the world's top carriers. After selling Mobile Diagnostix in 2004 Ian founded Storage Appliance Corporation in 2005, with the intent of solving consumer's backup nightmares. Storage Appliance Corporation developed the world's first line of Clickfree backup products where no interaction was required by customers to fully backup their personal computers
Jeff Brunet
Chief Technology Officer
An expert in distributed software development and bringing new technologies to market, Jeff is Chief Technology Officer at Storage Appliance Corporation. A serial entrepreneur with over 18 years of proven architecture, systems integration, and technology management experience, Jeff brings to the table an in-depth understanding of software development and the unique challenges in making new technologies successful in the start-up world.
Before joining Storage Appliance, Jeff served as Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer with Bitfone Corporation where he was responsible for all Engineering and Professional Services around the company's complex product portfolio. While at Bitfone Jeff also led the ground up creation of a highly successful 100+ person development team in Beijing, China. Bitfone was acquired by HP in 2006 for $160 million. Before joining Bitfone, Jeff served as Vice President of Technology & Chief Technology Officer with Mobile Diagnostix Inc. He was responsible for all aspects of the architecture & implementation of the company's flagship product, SmartCare, a customer care & remote diagnostic tool for mobile service providers. Mobile Diagnostix was successfully acquired
Patrick Heffron
Chief Operating Officer
Patrick is a Chartered Accountant and brings 20 years of technology, telecom and channel management experience to Clickfree. Prior to joining Clickfree, Patrick was VP Finance & CFO for the Wholesale division of Bell Canada. Prior to that, he spent 11 years at IBM in roles such as the Chief Accountant (Canada), CFO for the iSeries (AS/400) division for the Americas, CFO, IBM Global Financing Canada and in pricing for hardware, software and services opportunities. In these roles, Patrick has developed a proven track record of focusing and re-vitalizing businesses to achieve profitable growth objectives, and an expertise in channel management. He volunteers his time with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario on their 'Members in Industry' advisory panel, is a member of FEI and YTA, and has been a board member with not-for-profit organizations such as the Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences and The Paediatric Supportive Care Network of Ontario.
Carlo Pannella
Chief Financial Officer
Carlo has worked for over 15 years in finance roles primarily in the technology sector, including his past role as Director of Finance and Corporate Controller of Excel-Tech Ltd., a high-tech medical device publicly-traded company. His experience encompasses growing companies from early start-up stage into much larger companies; including the creation of controls and procedures to support this growth, and the mentoring required to help employees focus and achieve the organizational goals. Carlo has been heavily involved in private and public equity offerings, including taking a company public on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the sale of a company to a US NASDAQ listed company. He has a Bachelor of Business degree and his Canadian Chartered Accountant designation.
Gary Connell
EVP Business Development
Gary has 25 years experience in business to consumer markets in both retail marketing, and in the consumer and wireless technology sectors. These roles included, VP Commercial division with Sharp Electronics, General Manager of Sony Ericsson Canada, VP Consumer Division with Ericsson Canada, and VP Communication Group with Sanyo Electric. Gary is a past Chairman, of the Communication Research Group with the Electronic Manufacturing Association of Canada.
Alex Lemelev
Vice President, Engineering
Alex Lemelev leads research and development at Storage Appliance Corporation. Alex provides over 15 years of experience in the design and development of system-level software for the Telecom, Networking and Communications industries. Alex has staffed, planned and managed software development, testing and technical support teams for a number of companies.
He was previously in charge of client development at Bitfone Corporation. Alex led the device agent development team across a number of innovative mobile operating systems, such as Symbian, Windows CE, Palm, J2ME devices at Mobile Diagnostix, acquired by Bitfone in 2004.
Earlier, at Lucent Technologies Israel (formerly Chromatis Networks which was acquired by Lucent Technologies for $4.7 billion in 2000), Alex was responsible for the ATE Software Development team for metro optical networking systems. After merging with Lucent, Alex became the primary integrator between the Israel and US teams in charge of the technologies merging and integration.
Alex earned his BSc in Mathematics and Computer Science from Ben-Gurion University, Israel.
Jordan Pan
General Manager China
Jordan is the General Manager of Storage Appliance Corp. China and the Vice President of Storage Appliance Corp. China Development Centre (CDC) He is responsible for China Operation and technical management of product development in CDC.
Jordan has a broad base of experience in technical management and has previously held roles across Professional Services, R&D, QA, and Project Management with Amdocs Inc., Rogers Communications Inc., Mobile Diagnostix Inc. and Bitfone Corp. Most recently he was the Director of Global Project Management with Bitfone Corporation where he was instrumental in building a development team in China and implementing project management and development processes to enable multi-site development to function efficiently.
The Team
Clickfree employs over 100 computer and industry experts with a proven track record of designing, manufacturing and selling award winning technologies. The Clickfree Automatic Backup team is spread around the world including headquarters in Toronto, Canada, manufacturing locations in Asia, and sales offices in the United States, Australia, and throughout Europe.
As a testament to the strength of Clickfree Automatic Backup's team, there are many US Patents that have been approved for Clickfree's technology, with many more still pending. These innovations focus on Computer Software and Electronic Goods manufacturing.
Approved Patents |
Date Approved |
Description |
| US 7,702,830 | April 20, 2010 | Methods for Selectively Copying Data Files to Networked Storage and Devices for Initiating the Same Summary: Flash memory based devices with Emulation Component to Easy Run Backup Application to selectively copy data to:
|
| US 7,813,913 | October 12, 2010 | Emulation Component for Data Backup Applications Summary: CD-ROM emulation of an Easy Run device to automatically backup data to the same drive. |
| US 7,818,160 | October 19, 2010 | Data Backup Devices and Methods for Backing up Data Summary: CD-ROM emulation of an Easy Run device to automatically invoke a backup application using a software appliance. |
| US 7,822,595 | October 26, 2010 | Systems and Methods for Selectively Copying Embedded Data Files Summary: Covers extraction of embedded data files during a backup. Extraction of data files can be based on selective criteria (e.g. photos only) from e-mail programs (e.g. Outlook) or compressed files (e.g. ZIP files). |
| US 7,844,445 | November 30, 2010 | Automatic Connection to an Online Service Provider from a Backup System Summary: Covers different processes or services that can be automatically offered after a backup session is complete. For example:
|
| US 7,899,662 | March 1, 2011 | Data Backup System Including a Data Protection Component Summary: A system that allows for:
|
| US 7,941,845 | May 10, 2011 | Systems and Methods for Controlling Production Quantities Summary: A system that controls the number of products manufactured at a remote production facility to prevent piracy, limit the number of devices manufactured by a contract manufacturer, and offer an online method of activation of products as they are produced on a manufacturing line. |
| Pending | More than 30 patents already filed pending approval |
As the inventors of Automatic Backup for personal computers, Storage Appliance Corporation, the makers of Clickfree Automatic Backup, has received numerous industry awards and accolades from key industry leaders throughout the world.
PCMag Editor's Choice Award
Clickfree Wireless
June 2011The Clickfree Wireless Automatic Backup extends its dead simple backup to all the computers on your network, whether they are Windows PCs or Macs. You don't even need to know what an Ethernet cable is or change any settings anywhere to back up your systems over a network. If you value your data and convenience, get a Clickfree Wireless.
Computer Shopper Editor's Choice Award
Clickfree C3
February 2011This is a near-perfect set-it-and-forget-it backup device for multi-computer homes.
Last Gadget Standing award, CES 2010
Clickfree C2
January 2011The Clickfree C2 was selected a semifinalist in the Last Gadget Standing competition. Of the dozens of products considered, the Clickfree C2 is one of the Top 25 best products.
Laptop Magazine, Best of 2010 CES Awards
Clickfree C2N
January 2010Backing up multiple computers doesn't get much simpler than the C2N backup drive series.
Backing up multiple computers doesn't get much simpler than this. The C2N backup drive series, available in capacities ranging from 250GB to 640GB, allows you to automatically back up multiple notebooks in your home or office, courtesy of Clickfree's excellent BackupLink technology. Just connect the Clickfree C2N to each notebook on your wired or unwired network once, and then leave it connected to any one system to back up all the content on those computers (including the operating system, programs, and data files). Compatible with both Mac and Windows, the software can also extract and organize e-mail attachments, import iPod music to any computer, and protect sensitive data with 256-bit hardware-accelerated encryption.
PC World “Storage and Useful Gadgets: Best of 2010”
Clickfree C2N
October 2010Store it, network it, power it, record it, and project it with our selections in this category, which includes the best in solid-state drives, network-attached storage, and other hardware.
Backup device; $140 for 500GB Clickfree's automated, simple-to-use software for this drive permits easy backups of multiple PCs connected on a network.
PCMag Editor's Choice Award
HD325
February 2009With the HD325, a 320GB drive that's dead simple to use and has plenty of space for files from multiple computers, Storage Appliance Corp. improves its Clickfree backup hard drive with Mac compatibility.
Computer Shopper Editor's Choice Award
Clickfree C2 227 (250GB)
November 2009C2 Review: If you're still backing up the old-fashioned way, now's a good time to upgrade to the 21st century. Clickfree offers the simplest hard-drive-based backup solution we've seen with its C2 backup drive.
Computer Shopper Top 100 Products of 2009
Best Backup Drive: Clickfree C2 227
December 2009Most good backup drives do one thing well and everything else just adequately. Clickfree stomped all over that trend, however, with its C2 227, a fast, snazzy-looking 250GB backup device. It fits in your pocket and comes with a feature-filled software suite that doesn’t even require installation.
Computer Shopper Editor's Choice Award
Clickfree Traveler (32GB)
June 2009The handsome, credit-card-size Clickfree Traveler offers the easiest file-backup solution we’ve ever seen. It's best for those trafficking in small data files.
The PC World 100: Best Products of 2009
Clickfree Traveler
December 2009PC World looked at many outstanding hardware, software, sites, and services this year, evaluating each one on its design, functionality, performance, and impact. Here is the cream of the crop, the 100 best of 2009.
This lightweight, credit-card-size device combines a generous amount of storage with easy-to-use backup software, making it perfect for people who need extra storage on the go. The Traveler's body cleverly conceals a full USB 2.0 interface, connected by a ribbon cable. Its built-in software performs full backups automatically, and can track and back up data from multiple computers.
Corporate inquires including investor relations, shareholder services, licensing or technology patents please send an email to corporate.relations@clickfree.com.
Media inquires please send an email to pr@clickfree.com.
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