Introducing Data Protection Software Research Coverage

We are preparing our final edits on the Trends in Enterprise Data Protection Research Study which is scheduled for release in January 2019.  This study looks at operational trends in data protection over the next 1 to 2 years from a multi-dimensional perspective highlighting the use of interrelated activities including point-in-time copies, backups, disaster recovery (DR), archive, and data management.  This research has validated our impressions that many IT organizations are re-evaluating their data protection strategies and solutions as part of the overall digital transformation in the industry.

To help those organizations evaluate the hardware and software solutions for data protection, we have been updating and expanding our data protection research.  In previous blogs, we highlighted the following updates:

• In June, we announced the availability of our Scale-Out Data Protection systems research area which you can find here. These systems are one of the areas generating significant interest from IT organizations and the introduction of these technologies are one of the reasons they are re-evaluating their data protection strategies.
• In October, we blogged about our updated and combined Data Protection System matrix which combined what was four data protection systems matrices (virtual, entry-level, midrange and high-end) into a single, overall matrix for our traditional data protection systems research.

We are now pleased to have released our Enterprise Data Protection Software research which was previewed in last month’s blog.  This research includes a side-by-side comparison matrix of enterprise data protection software, an updated Data Protection Systems and Software Evaluation Guide (an enhanced guide for use with both the systems and software solutions for data protection), and new Product Briefs providing highlights, product usage, Evaluator Group’s opinion and a review of each product using the Eval(u)Scale methodology. The Data Protection Software products currently covered in this new research are:

• Commvault Complete Backup and Recovery
• Dell EMC Avamar
• Dell EMC Networker
• IBM Spectrum Protect
• IBM Spectrum Protect Plus
• Veeam Backup and Replication
• Veritas NetBackup

We will follow up with more detailed Product Analyses of these solutions in the future.  In the meantime, if you have any questions on these solutions or how we selected these vendors for the first release, please let me know.

We will also look at other vendors to add to the evaluation in the future.  With well over one hundred vendors offering data protection solutions in the market today, it can be a challenge to prioritize which ones to include next.  If you have started or are planning to re-evaluate your data protection solutions, what are you considering?  Do your data protection activities happen on-premises or do they move to the cloud?  Are data protection as-a-Services offerings being considered?  Let us know which type of data protection software and/or which vendors you would like to see compared with the current ones and why you are interested.