Allow me to share some exciting news just announced on May 20, 2015. Backup Exec has received the MSExchange.org 2015 Reader’s Choice award for Exchange Backup! In fact, eleven out of the last twelve years, MSExchange.org readers have ranked Backup Exec as the best Microsoft Exchange backup and recovery solution in the market. #GoSolve
We’re ecstatic about this award and the recognition users are continuing to give to Backup Exec. Our hard work and dedication to make a rock solid product is paying off.
Let’s talk about our journey to get here. Back in 2013 assembled a highly seasoned team; its members ranging from technical support, developers, and product management to explore ways we could address customers top concerns around backup and recovery.
Leadership goals and directions were clear: 1) listen to our customers and their needs, 2) address the top call generating issues, and 3) increase the quality of Backup Exec to such a level that customers would have the highest level of confidence in future Beta releases to use it in a production environment, and fully supported by our developers 24x7.
Also, during this time we implemented new methodologies and best practices. Below are just a few areas that we put into practice.
- Agile Software Development, which promotes adaptive planning, continuous improvements, and encourages rapid response to change and faster time to market.
- Scrum Software Development – This provided the opportunity to engage customers early and ensure we are solving for real-world problems, delivering true customer value.
- Refinement in our Operating Framework, which provides a set of proven best practices for managing our products with the end goal in mind of delivering high-value solutions that customers want to buy.
- Customer Driven innovation - this has allowed us to spend time listening and observing customers in their day to day environment, and identifying unmet needs to which we can address.
- Production Quality Beta –we set out on a journey to prove the Backup Exec 2014 beta was production quality. In fact we had thousands of customers participating with tremendous feedback.
- Customer Service & Technical Support – we made new investments in improving how we provide service and support and have seen significant improvements in both customer and product satisfaction. Our partners and customers really showed their appreciation and how excited they are that we are back on track.
Shortly after we release Backup Exec 2014, on October 2014 Redmond Third-Party Reader's Choice Awards: Backup Exec receives the Redmond “Platinum” Reader’s Choice Award. More proof that we were back on track!
After the release of Backup Exec 2014 we continued to stay focused on delivering timely release, continued increase in product quality, timely platform support, and all while delivering incremental customer value.
You will continue to see as we go forward in our quarterly release cadence, you can expect that we will continue to stay focused on driving down those top call generating issues via the quarterly updates, timely platform support and addressing our customer’s top needs.
April 2015 we release Backup Exec 15!
We proved not only could we continue to increase quality, we could increase performance for backup and recovery, improve GRT (Granular Restore Technology) and overall reliability, as well as deliver DAY ZERO support for vSphere 6.0.
We also introduced a new lower cost Capacity Edition Lite offering that allows new customers to start small and pay as they grow. For existing customers with active maintenance who want to move from a la carte to Capacity, we’ve made it easy.
Some additional areas that continue to show proof that our hard work is paying off:
- Faster adoption rate of new release due to moving to smaller quarterly release cadence.
- Highest Server install rate in the history of Backup Exec
- A decline in product related defects.
- The overall trend and increase in customer and product satisfaction.
- Exceeding expectations by delivering new platform support ahead of schedule. Our goal is Day Zero for new platform support.
- And just this month we refined our customer support delivery organization into their own respective geographies so that we can focus on providing the best customer support experience.
We THANK our loyal customers and partners, and we welcome our new customers to the family. You have truly made an impact helping us to improve quality, reliability, and supportability. We hope you see that we are your trusted adviser when it comes to information protection and availability.
As a proud member of the Backup and Recovery Product Management team here at Symantec, we thank you.
Go Veritas!
