Report Date: January 2011 This research is the inaugural version of a new Magic Quadrant that looks beyond enterprise software-only backup vendors and their solutions, and places a new emphasis on evaluating a broader set of vendors that offers disk-based data capture and data recovery capabilities. Backup and recovery is one of the oldest and most frequently performed operations in the data center. Despite the long timeline associated with backup, the practice has seen a number of changes (such as new recovery techniques and a new, expanded set of vendors to consider) and challenges (such as how to protect server virtualized environments, very large databases, remote offices, and desktops and laptops) in recent years. Gartner end-user inquiry call volume regarding backup continues to be high every year, and has been rising at about 20% each year for the past three years. Organizations worldwide are seeking ways to easily, quickly and cost-effectively ensure that their data is appropriately protected. Organizations are also voicing the opinion that backup needs to improve a lot, not just a little. For more research on current backup/recovery challenges, and practical advice on how to address them, see "Best Practices for Addressing the Broken State of Backup" and "Backup and Recovery Optimization and Cost Avoidance." The rising frustration with backup implies that the data protection approaches of the past may no longer suffice in meeting current, much less future, recovery requirements. As such, companies are willing to adopt new technologies and products from new vendors, and have shown an increased willingness to switch backup/recovery providers in order to better meet their increasing service levels. The 2009 trends of incorporating more disk in the recovery process, deploying data deduplication and "treating disk as disk," versus seeking appliances with a virtual tape library (VTL) interface, not only continued but accelerated in 2010.
Mentions: CommVault, EMC, IBM, Symantec, NetApp, FalconStor Software, CA Technologies, HP, Asigra, i365, BakBone Software, Iron Mountain, Syncsort, Atempo, Acronis
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Topics: Market Research, Competitive Intelligence, Competitive Strategy, Market Intelligence