The Forrester Wave : Enterprise Backup And Recovery Software, Q2 2013

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1 For: Infrastructure & Operations Professionals The Forrester Wave : Enterprise Backup And Recovery Software, Q by Rachel A. Dines, June 28, 2013 KEY TAKEAWAYS Plagued By Age-Old Backup And Recovery Problems, Firms Look To Upgrade The enterprise backup and recovery software market is, as ever, in a state of flux as more and more I&O professionals grow tired of traditional backup methods. From missed backup windows to slow or failed recoveries, many firms are weary of the constant battle with their backup software and are looking for a change. Backup Isn t Just About Backup Anymore It s About Improved Resiliency Today s backup and recovery software suites are evolving beyond simple backup and restore. Today, many of the differentiating capabilities are focused on continuity, restore, replication, and automation, allowing I&O pros to integrate their backup suites into their business technology resiliency strategies in new ways. Cloud, Continuity, And App Integration Are The Key Differentiators As organizations move from tape, to disk, to cloud technologies, and begin focusing on resiliency not recovery, they will require a new breed of backup and recovery suites. Differentiating features include advanced application and hypervisor awareness; improved backup target integrations; and more recovery and continuity features. Forrester Research, Inc., 60 Acorn Park Drive, Cambridge, MA USA Tel: Fax:

2 JUNE 28, 2013 The Forrester Wave : Enterprise Backup And Recovery Software, Q The Six Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up by Rachel A. Dines with Stephanie Balaouras and Jessica McKee WHY READ THIS REPORT In Forrester s 61-criteria evaluation of enterprise backup and recovery software vendors, we identified the six most significant software providers ASG, CommVault, EMC, HP, IBM, and Symantec in the category and researched, analyzed, and scored them. This report details our findings about how well each vendor fulfills our criteria and where they stand in relation to each other to help infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals select the right partner for their backup and recovery software suites. Table Of Contents Enterprises Continue To Struggle With Basic Backup Challenges Enterprise Backup And Recovery Software Evaluation Overview Four Leaders Emerge In The Backup And Recovery Software Space Vendor Profiles: ASG, CommVault, EMC, HP, IBM, And Symantec Supplemental Material Notes & Resources Forrester conducted product evaluations in March 2013 and interviewed 16 user companies and six vendor companies: ASG, CommVault, EMC, HP, IBM, and Symantec. Related Research Documents Master The Eight Disruptors That Will Transform Business Technology Resiliency In 2013 February 15, 2013 Market Overview: Disk Libraries, Q January 17, 2012 Market Overview: Enterprise-Class Backup And Recovery Software November 19, , Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester, Technographics, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. To purchase reprints of this document, please [email protected]. For additional information, go to

3 The Forrester Wave : Enterprise Backup And Recovery Software, Q ENTERPRISES CONTINUE TO STRUGGLE WITH BASIC BACKUP CHALLENGES Many organizations view backup as one of the necessary evils of running IT something that we must do, even if it is painful, slow, and expensive, and seems to provide zero strategic business value. As a result, many I&O professionals let their backup and recovery software suites languish either using out-of-date versions or letting maintenance run out. Worse, some I&O pros are giving up on backing up certain systems in a last-ditch effort to improve backup windows. While the latest and greatest technology isn t the answer to every problem, today s backup and recovery suites are evolving to solve many of these challenges and more. Today s Backup And Recovery Suites Offer More Than Operational Backup And Restore The backup and recovery suites we evaluated in this Forrester Wave evaluation strive to add value beyond simple operational backup and restore. While the future of backup software is still in flux, Forrester believes that it will involve more continuity and resiliency tools, additional endpoint functionality, and cloud-optimized infrastructures. Look for key differentiators in the market, including: Application and hypervisor awareness. The ability to back up key applications nondisruptively and then quickly restore the entire system or just individual objects is an area where existing backup solutions are still evolving. All of the evaluated vendors in this Forrester Wave evaluation have some application expertise, but most still require agents or multiple backups to achieve granular restore. Similarly, in the hypervisor arena, most vendors have strong capabilities in the VMware suite, but they lack support for other hypervisors. Advanced backup target integrations. All of the evaluated solutions have the ability to target virtually any disk or tape target, but the ability to use the cloud as a backup target is an emerging feature. With interest and adoption of disk-to-disk-to-cloud (D2D2C) backup architectures starting to take off 26% of enterprises have already adopted, with another 16% looking to adopt this could be a significant differentiator in your decision-making process. 1 Additionally, backup accelerators, which allow for more efficient backups with greater integration between hardware and software, are increasing in popularity. Continuity and recovery features. As backup strategies become tightly integrated into your business technology resiliency strategy, the advanced continuity and recovery features in backup solutions become more important. Today s backup solutions offer capabilities such as the ability to boot virtual machines (VMs) directly out of a backup store or the ability to call array-based snapshots, which are then stored in native formats for quick recovery. These are in addition to host-based replication and continuous data protection capabilities that started appearing in backup software suites during the past five years.

4 The Forrester Wave : Enterprise Backup And Recovery Software, Q Acquisitions And Megavendors Shape The Backup Software Landscape Most of the IT giants have offerings in the backup software market although integration with hardware offerings in the same space is still lacking. Beyond the megavendors (EMC, HP, IBM), there are also several independent software vendors that provide strong offerings in this space (ASG, CommVault, Symantec). Many of the vendors in this evaluation have made significant acquisitions in recent years to develop their backup and recovery capabilities: ASG (Atempo), EMC (Avamar), IBM (FilesX), and Symantec (DataCenter Technologies), to name a few. What we see today is a consolidated market with a half-dozen vendors providing solutions in the enterprise data center space, although many of the evaluated providers suffer from fragmented or loosely integrated software suites. ENTERPRISE BACKUP AND RECOVERY SOFTWARE EVALUATION OVERVIEW To assess the state of the enterprise backup and recovery software market and see how the vendors stack up against each other, Forrester evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of top vendors. Criteria Focus On Key Features, Vision, Ability To Execute And Global Presence After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we developed a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria. We evaluated vendors against 61 criteria, which we grouped into three high-level buckets: Current offering. We evaluated the current offering of the participating vendors by looking at their capabilities in the arenas of data reduction, primary deduplication, ability to support different backup targets from tape to cloud, advanced backup, restore and continuity capabilities, heterogeneous platform support, security and error-checking capabilities, manageability, and scalability. Forrester evaluated only software capabilities, regardless of whether the vendor provides a hardware platform. Strategy. The strategy scores are based on the company s vision for backup and recovery and its plans for product improvements. In addition, Forrester looked at R&D investments in the individual products, strategic partnerships, and customer satisfaction (based on customer surveys). Market presence. To measure market presence, Forrester looked at the installed base, total company revenue and revenue growth, go-to-market partnerships, global customer service coverage, professional services and consulting capabilities, sales staff, and global geographic presence.

5 The Forrester Wave : Enterprise Backup And Recovery Software, Q Vendors Have A Scalable Server Backup Suite With Broad Platform Support Forrester included six vendors in the assessment: ASG, CommVault, EMC, HP, IBM, and Symantec. Each of these vendors has (see Figure 1): An enterprise backup software solution designed for data center backups. In this evaluation, Forrester only looked at the software components of vendors offerings. Solutions that focused only on enterprise remote offices, branch offices, or endpoints were not considered in this report. Proven scale for the large enterprise. Vendors included in this evaluation must have more than 100 current customers with more than 1 petabyte (PB) of backup data under management and at least one customer with more than 10 PB of backup data under management. Heterogeneous platform support. The product must support backups of all major versions of Windows, Unix, Linux, VMware, Hyper-V, and Citrix Systems. Figure 1 Evaluated Vendors: Product Information And Selection Criteria Vendor ASG CommVault EMC HP IBM Symantec Product evaluated ASG-Time Navigator Simpana Backup Portfolio (Avamar and NetWorker) Data Protector Tivoli Storage Manager NetBackup Software version Avamar 7.0 NetWorker Evaluation criteria: An enterprise backup software solution designed for data center backups. In this evaluation, Forrester looked only at the software components of vendor s offerings. Solutions that focused only on enterprise remote offices, branch offices, or endpoints were not considered in this report. Proven scale for the large enterprise. Vendors included in this evaluation must have more than 100 current customers with more than 1 petabye (PB) of backup data under management and at least one customer with more than 10 PB of backup data under management. Heterogeneous platform support. The product must support backups of all major versions of Windows, Unix, Linux, VMware, Hyper-V, and Citrix. Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

6 The Forrester Wave : Enterprise Backup And Recovery Software, Q FOUR LEADERS EMERGE IN THE BACKUP AND RECOVERY SOFTWARE SPACE The evaluation uncovered a market in which there are several Leaders, which is unsurprising in a relatively mature market segment (see Figure 2): CommVault, EMC, IBM, and Symantec lead the pack. It s a tight four-horse race for the top honors CommVault, EMC, IBM, and Symantec all scored high on strategy and current offerings. However, each of these solutions is very different and each presents its own set of strengths and weaknesses. CommVault touts its simplicity and unified platform, while EMC has strong integration with its hardware portfolio. IBM excels in extremely large and complex environments, and Symantec focuses on data and cost reduction. HP offers a competitive alternative. HP trails just behind the lead pack with Data Protector, a solid solution that just hasn t seen the focus or investment that it deserves. Under new management and with a renewed focus on the customer, HP could catch up in the near future. ASG needs to play catch-up. ASG is brand new to the backup market and it shows the company is still working to position ASG-Time Navigator in its greater portfolio. While Atempo has had solutions in the market since 1992, lack of investment in developing the product during the past several years has resulted in several key features missing in the solution set. This evaluation of the enterprise backup and recovery software market is intended to be a starting point only. We encourage clients to view detailed product evaluations and adapt criteria weightings to fit their individual needs through the Forrester Wave Excel-based vendor comparison tool.

7 The Forrester Wave : Enterprise Backup And Recovery Software, Q Figure 2 Forrester Wave : Enterprise Backup And Recovery Software, Q2 13 Strong Risky Strong Bets Contenders Performers Leaders CommVault EMC IBM Symantec HP Go online to download the Forrester Wave tool for more detailed product evaluations, feature comparisons, and customizable rankings. Current offering ASG Market presence Weak Weak Strategy Strong Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

8 The Forrester Wave : Enterprise Backup And Recovery Software, Q Figure 2 Forrester Wave : Enterprise Backup And Recovery Software, Q2 13 (Cont.) Forrester s Weighting ASG CommVault EMC HP IBM Symantec CURRENT OFFERING Data reduction capabilities and scalability Backup targets Advanced backup options Encryption Platform support Continuity and restore features Backup verification and error checking Complementary modules Manageability Setup and implementation Scalability 50% 15% 20% 5% 5% 0% 5% STRATEGY Corporate and product strategy Research and development Strategic partnerships Cost Customer satisfaction 50% 45% 15% 25% 0% 15% MARKET PRESENCE Installed base Revenue Revenue growth Go-to-market partnerships Customer service Professional services and consulting Sales staff Geographic presence 0% 35% 15% 5% 5% All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong). Source: Forrester Research, Inc. VENDOR PROFILES: ASG, COMMVAULT, EMC, HP, IBM, AND SYMANTEC Leaders: CommVault, EMC, Symantec, And IBM Vie For Top Honors CommVault excels with an integrated platform. CommVault s primary strategy centers on providing a single platform for backup, recovery, continuity, archive, and other data management and protection strategies. The 17-year-old company uses its relative youth to

9 The Forrester Wave : Enterprise Backup And Recovery Software, Q its advantage, touting a modern approach to data protection. CommVault scored high in the current offering section and is in a virtual tie for top honors with competitor EMC. Areas of strength for CommVault include its deduplication capabilities and cloud-target integrations, as well as hypervisor and application capabilities. The company also received high marks in the professional services and consulting area, which is a newly expanded offering for CommVault. While its market share is still considerably smaller than the other giants in the Leaders category, CommVault continues to see rapid growth, nearly doubling its customer base during the past four years. EMC focuses on hardware and software integration. The storage giant focuses its backup software strategy on storage protection across many different silos, architectures, and applications. While the EMC Backup Portfolio is actually composed of four fairly independent products NetWorker, Avamar, Data Protection Advisor, and Data Domain the company now licenses the three software solutions together in a capacity-based bundle and has an objective of eliminating backup silos. There is still additional work ahead for EMC to integrate these solutions in a tighter fashion. EMC scored high in deduplication capabilities, platform support, and scalability. It also leads the pack in the strategy section, where it scored very high in corporate and product strategy and R&D investment. Symantec reinvents itself and refines focus. Symantec s focus is on backup transformation and allowing its customers to spend less time, money, and resources on the backup process. Thus, it is focusing investments on improved management and self-service, automation, and application integration. While the software vendor has hit some road bumps as a corporate entity, if the organization can execute on its vision, the new Symantec 4.0 holds promise for the backup and recovery division. In this evaluation, Symantec scored high in the platform support categories, which is consistent with its strategy, as well as continuity and restore features and R&D investment. Despite Symantec being primarily a software company, NetBackup boasts some of the most robust hardware integrations, including the ability to control snapshots and replication on the primary storage and the support of several different backup accelerators. IBM simplifies management, focuses on cloud. IBM s strategy in the backup and recovery space is to bring scalable, high-quality, and simple products to market in order to store, analyze, and protect data. Recently, the company has also placed increased focus on cloud both providing capabilities for cloud service providers to use its platform for service offerings and integrating with cloud storage. One continued weakness for IBM is its lack of integration with its hardware and services portfolio. While the company has made some improvements during the past few years, there is still a significant gap between the lines of business. It has, however, successfully integrated the FastBack and Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) capabilities into a unified offering. IBM scored well in its current offering, with strengths in deduplication, manageability (due to significant improvements in TSM Operations Center), continuity, and restore features.

10 The Forrester Wave : Enterprise Backup And Recovery Software, Q Strong Performers: HP Trails Close Behind The Leader Group HP aims to provide analytics from its backup platform. Now under the HP Autonomy division s management, HP s backup and recovery group focuses on reducing data footprints, gaining analytics from backup data, and converging multiple platforms. In the coming year, it will focus on converging and integrating multiple assets throughout the Autonomy and legacy Iron Mountain Digital portfolio in server backup, endpoint backup, and archive using Autonomy Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) as a backbone. Like Symantec, HP has recently seen some tumultuous times, but it appears to be heading in the right direction with a focus on transparency, customer satisfaction, and delivering HP on HP. While HP fell just short of the Leaders group, it scored well in platform support and scalability, with strong hypervisor and application capabilities (although it was unable to demonstrate all of these advanced capabilities during its product demo). Contenders: ASG Works To Integrate The Acquisition Of Atempo ASG integrates acquisition and focuses on IT service continuity management. ASG s focus is in the world of IT service management (ITSM), which may be why some industry veterans were surprised to see it acquire a backup and recovery software company. To ASG, however, Atempo fills a key portion of the ITSM life cycle: IT service continuity management and availability management. With the acquisition of Atempo now more than a year old, ASG has worked hard to bring the company into the fold, and it s made significant progress. ASG integrated Atempo organizationally, and it has also taken steps to integrate existing ASG products like ASG- TrackBird and Enterprise Automation Management Suite into ASG-Live Navigator. While ASG is missing many of the advanced backup and data reduction capabilities of its competitors, it scored well in platform support and aspects of scalability. And while ASG s market share is quite small compared with most of the other vendors in this Forrester Wave evaluation, it has many large implementations and has a healthy investment in R&D for its products. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL Online Resource The online version of Figure 2 is an Excel-based vendor comparison tool that provides detailed product evaluations and customizable rankings. Data Sources Used In This Forrester Wave Forrester used a combination of three data sources to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each solution:

11 The Forrester Wave : Enterprise Backup And Recovery Software, Q Vendor surveys. Forrester surveyed vendors on their capabilities as they relate to the evaluation criteria. Once we analyzed the completed vendor surveys, we conducted vendor calls where necessary to gather details of vendor qualifications. Product demos. We asked vendors to conduct demonstrations of their product s functionality. We used findings from these product demos to validate details of each vendor s product capabilities. Customer reference surveys. To validate product and vendor qualifications, Forrester also conducted online surveys with at least two of each vendor s current customers. The Forrester Wave Methodology We conduct primary research to develop a list of vendors that meet our criteria to be evaluated in this market. From that initial pool of vendors, we then narrow our final list. We choose these vendors based on: 1) product fit; 2) customer success; and 3) Forrester client demand. We eliminate vendors that have limited customer references and products that don t fit the scope of our evaluation. After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we develop the initial evaluation criteria. To evaluate the vendors and their products against our set of criteria, we gather details of product qualifications through a combination of lab evaluations, questionnaires, demos, and/or discussions with client references. We send evaluations to the vendors for their review, and we adjust the evaluations to provide the most accurate view of vendor offerings and strategies. We set default weightings to reflect our analysis of the needs of large user companies and/or other scenarios as outlined in the Forrester Wave document and then score the vendors based on a clearly defined scale. These default weightings are intended only as a starting point, and we encourage readers to adapt the weightings to fit their individual needs through the Excel-based tool. The final scores generate the graphical depiction of the market based on current offering, strategy, and market presence. Forrester intends to update vendor evaluations regularly as product capabilities and vendor strategies evolve. Integrity Policy All of Forrester s research, including Forrester Wave evaluations, is conducted according to our Integrity Policy. For more information, go to ENDNOTES 1 Source: Forrsights Hardware Survey, Q

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