Hayden Hartland - DiskAgent
Hayden Hartland is President and CEO of Spearstone. He has over 12 years of experience leading business and development divisions, growing organizations, building, deploying and distributing enterprise and small business solutions. His past professional experience includes companies such as Henry Schein, Intel, TenFold and NextPage.
Silicon Slopes: What’s your background and how did Spearstone come about?
Hayden Hartland: We founded Spearstone in 2004 and headquarters are based in Salt Lake City, Utah. We are a software products and application development team specializing in defining, delivering, and deploying software solutions using proven customer-focused processes. We have created more than 20 successful enterprise applications for companies in financial services, healthcare, legal, manufacturing and educational endeavors.
Spearstone’s software product and service strategy is to provide small- and medium-size businesses (SMBs) with enterprise-class solutions, support and infrastructure at an affordable price. Our management team has spent countless years implementing systems for fortune 100 businesses and has developed a unique strategy to bring those solutions and infrastructure to the SMB market. We are committed to providing affordable prices so SMBs can focus on their core business.
Silicon Slopes: Can you tell us about your first product offering, DiskAgent?
Hayden Hartland: In August, we launched the DiskAgent family of services to make feature-rich data protection solutions available and affordable for SMBs, home offices and individuals. DiskAgent is Spearstone’s first branded product designed to leverage the momentum in the software as a service (SaaS) marketplace.
DiskAgent currently provides continuous online backup, remote PC wipe and PC recovery services. This offers a comprehensive data protection solution for standard desktop machines and servers. It also provides mobile PC users with continuous backup and the remote wipe capability if the notebook OC is lost or stolen. Beyond the capability of remotely wiping the mobile device clean of data, DiskAgent also assists law enforcement in the recovery of that device.
Silicon Slopes: How is the launch going so far?
Hayden Hartland: We are getting tremendous market response from strategic partners. This is exactly what we were hoping for and anticipate it will generate outcomes that far exceed our goals. So far, prospective partners have provided positive reviews of our product and strategy because we are channel-focused and support our partners in achieving their own success.
Silicon Slopes: Are you still offering custom software development to clients or focusing solely on DiskAgent?
Hayden Hartland: Yes. We continue to maintain relationships with our clients and assist them with their own product development. We have worked with clients such as Wells Fargo, Mountain America Credit Union, Phelps Dodge, i.TV, Pearson Learning, RemedyMD, Softwise and more. Our future product development projects include each of the clients already mentioned, TruRapport (a CRM optimization application), and our own product development initiatives.
Silicon Slopes: What sets DiskAgent apart from other online data backup solutions?
Hayden Hartland: While our competitors provide similar services, they are focused on only one leg of the stool. By offering remote wipe, device recovery and online backup, we are the only company with an all-encompassing solution. We are also the only solution that includes data protection services for smartphones. Our marketing strategy is also unique in that we offer channel partners and resellers the opportunity to offer our services as their own branded solution. Value added resellers and managed service providers, for instance, are the trusted technology partners for most SMBs and we wanted to empower them with SaaS solutions that would increase affinity with their own customers.
Silicon Slopes: What operating systems do you support?
Hayden Hartland: We currently support Windows XP, Windows Mobile, Windows Vista, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Blackberry, and Palm. Mac solutions are also on their way.
Silicon Slopes: What does the state of the online data backup market for personal users look like? How are you convincing personal users of the need for a product like DiskAgent?
Hayden Hartland: There are multiple online data backup providers… each with their own approach. There are a few front runners, but we feel our SMB focus and customer service philosophy better addresses business needs. SOHO and home users benefit because they are getting a more robust, yet affordable solution. Players focused on consumers view their customers as archive-only customers and they charge extra for true redundant backup storage. In addition to that, our primary competition in this space views data protection as backup only.
We see a much broader objective than just providing a copy of all your files at any point in time. DiskAgent goes beyond that by protecting unauthorized use or access to you confidential information in the event of theft. We take data protection very seriously and we developed DiskAgent to be a comprehensive solution that does not require the customer to seek other solutions to meet all their needs.
Frankly, we don’t feel like we need to convince consumers of a need. Everyone recognizes as PCs and smartphones increase in capabilities, the value of mobile data also increases. Therefore the need to protect that data becomes self-evident. Users recognize that hard drives are unpredictable and fail more often than anyone would like. PCs and smartphones are also prime targets for theft. Our goal is to make users aware there is a simple and affordable solution to protect their computers and valuable data.
Silicon Slopes: Where are you focusing your marketing efforts in terms of home vs. business users?
Hayden Hartland: The primary focus is SMBs, with home users as a secondary target. Our products are developed with the unique needs of small and midsized business at the forefront. This includes specific management functionality, HIPPA compliance and Sarbanes Oxley compliance. The product and value for both targets are equally viable and home users receive the same level of support and service as the SMB customers.
Silicon Slopes: Do have any other product offerings in the works?
Hayden Hartland: Yes. The smartphone remote wipe application will be available in December. The product offers protection against lost or stolen smartphones by remotely wiping the device of all resident and peripheral (SIM & SD) data. It will offer various levels of wipe—lock keypad, electronic shred, delete backup, disable device OS and boot sector. This means smartphone users and their employers can protect valuable data, even on the most vulnerable mobile devices.
We also have a road map laid out for product enhancements and upgrades over the course of the next year. These upgrades will take our products to the next level and provide customers with added data protection and recovery capabilities.
