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Unified Future?

Drew_Meyer
Level 4
Employee Accredited

After two weeks on this job it's plain to see there are some major industry dynamics afoot.

The backup market is in a consolidation phase, as we've seen companies dedicated to addressing virtualized environments mature and get aquired. Dell picked up AppAsure, Quest aquired VizionCore and then BakBone (then Dell aquired Quest), Quantum grabbed Pancetera.

Industry analysts are pointing out that point products are not effective for long-term data management strategies. Just like in the storage industry, a unified architecture platform is the smarter play. NetApp's championship of NAS and SAN at the same time in the same box drove EMC to aquire and integrate for years to achieve a similar solution. Dell aquired Compellent (after losing 3PAR to HP) after great success with a point product from EqualLogic to address some of the same problems.

VMware and Hyper-V are transforming large and small environments and creating backup management challenges through mixed hypervisor and legacy archive and recovery requirements. Point products just don't complete the picture for an IT generalist and create risk and reliabilty questions. Customers tell us they require quality, performance and reliabilty in their backup products regardless of environment or media, and are steadily realizing that Backup Exec has a unified architecture that gracefully addresses this risk factor. 

So, we're all living through a cycle of new companies proliferating, maturing and consolidating. The Venture Capitalists love this; risk-averse IT managers may not be so thrilled. Are you choosing your strategy or is it choosing you? I suggest that a unifed architecture from an independent vendor is the smarter bet.