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SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwire - Nov 1, 2012) - Symform is using humor and prizes to highlight the benefits of its distributed, decentralized and secure cloud storage network with its recently launched 'Byte Me' promotion.The campaign features two fictional IT managers trekking the globe in search of the perfect location to build their next data center.The two characters, Gus and Benny, are shown in the cartoon series visiting the Arctic, farm country, the high desert, and other locations where many cloud providers are building massive data centers today. Users who enter the promotion by downloading the Symform software have a chance to win a network attached storage (NAS) appliance, and one in four entrants receives a 'Byte Me' t-shirt.

"We are not anti-datacenter, but we do want people to think about all the excess capacity that sits wasted in data centers, networks and computing devices around the world that could be utilized, as well as illustrate how we literally cannot build enough data centers to store all the digital data being created," said Margaret Dawson, vice president of product management and marketing at Symform. "We speak seriously about the data center behind every cloud and how it behooves all of us to start thinking about distributed and decentralized approaches to IT and cloud computing, and this is just a way of having some fun with the topic and giving a chance for users to win great prizes."

The topic of data center costs and energy utilization has been a popular topic lately, highlighted in both a comprehensive report released by Greenpeace as well as a recent New York Times article titled, "Power, Pollution and the Internet." The Greenpeace report suggested data centers used for cloud computing account for about 2 percent of the world's carbon footprint, while the NYT article claimed data centers worldwide use about 30 billion watts of electricity, roughly equivalent to the output of 30 nuclear power plants. The article also cites Hank Seader, managing principal for research and education at the Uptime Institute, who says using the cloud "just changes where the applications are running. It all goes to a data center somewhere."

Symform offers the industry's first free and unlimited cloud backup service with their 'Bytes or Bucks' pricing, which enables customers to pay with 'Bytes' by contributing excess local drive space in exchange for secure cloud backup. Alternatively, customers can pay with 'Bucks' at the low cost of $0.15 per GB/month. With its patented technology and quickly-growing user base, Symform is building the world's largest virtual datacenter by leveraging contributed local storage space to power a global crowdsourced cloud storage network.

Today, Symform has customers in more than 150 countries, who are storing more than 5.5 billion data fragments across the cloud network. To join the 'Byte Me' revolution, go to: http://www.symform.com/try-symform-today-and-enter-the-byte-me-giveaway/.

About Symform The Symform Cloud Storage Network is a better way to store and backup all of your data. As the world's first distributed and crowdsourced data backup solution, Symform enables users to pay with bytes instead of bucks. Every business on the network contributes excess local drive space to the grid in exchange for secure, fast and reliable cloud data backup. Before data leaves the source device, it is encrypted and shredded, redundancy added, and then geo-distributed across the global network. With its proprietary and patented technology, Symform is building the world's largest virtual datacenter using existing Internet infrastructure. Go to http://www.symform.com or email info@symform.com for more information.

Symform, Symform Global Cloud Storage Network, the Resilient Storage Architecture, and RAID-96 are trademarks of Symform, Inc. References to other companies and their products acknowledge the trademarks owned by their respective companies and are for reference purposes only.

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Symform Challenges Users to Think Beyond Centralized Data Centers With Its 'Byte Me' Promotion