Abstract: Data protection and recovery in the Small-Midsized Business (SMB)

Data protection and recovery in the Small-Midsized Business (SMB)

An SSG-NOW Outlook Report

February 2012

Introduction

SSG-NOW Opinion – The market for data protection in small and mid-sized businesses, comprised of 1-999 employees, is growing quickly as the market economics change, as businesses are starting to free up money for spending and as they realized that protectingtheir assets is mandatory to the continuance of the business.

In This Study – This study provides a market sizing of the data protection market for small and mid-sized businesses in the United States in 2011. Coverage includes data protection software delivered as software, appliances and hosted services.

Market Definition – Data protection applications, whether traditional backup and recovery, snapshotting, replication, mirroring, server fail-over or disaster recovery – provide an automated and efficient way of storing and protecting application data on file servers, laptops and desktops. Backup and retrieval solutions are designed to provide regularly scheduled copies of a server or disk to enable the capability to bring data and applications back up and running after the server or disk fails.

Included in this study are software applications regardless of whether they are delivered as on-premises software (sometimes preinstalled on an appliance) or as a hosted service.

Methodology

SSG-NOW industry analysts have been measuring and analyzing the data protection market for a combined 30 years. Our strategy for doing so incorporates information from different, but interrelated, sources:

• Census Information on the SMB market
• Interviews with market participants (vendors) to determine product information, market and channel strategy and pricing
• Product briefings, press releases and other publicly available information. At SSG-NOW, our analysts meet with hundreds of vendors each year. These briefings provide an opportunity to review current and future product strategies, customer bases, target markets and other key product information.
• SSG-NOW’s user strategy interviews offer a compelling and consistent time-series view of industry trends and developments.

Situation Overview

Business Drivers and Market Trends

• SSG-NOW notes the following trends in the business drivers, competitive landscape and corporate purchasing behavior:
• Data protection and recovery is the top motivator for SMBs
• SMBs, like large enterprises, are experiencing explosive data growth patterns.
• Like large enterprises, SMBs are also regulated by government and other compliance mandates. They must archive data and make sure that it is readily available.
• Smaller businesses, especially in the 1-100 employee range, are often impacted by a lack of IT staff and resources.
• SMBs are constrained in their spending on storage resources
• SMBs are becoming increasingly aware of the requirements of protecting their data.
• SMBs have several methods of data protection in tape ranging from tape to disk technology, but are adopting technologies such as replication, mirroring and deduplication
• SMBs are excellent candidates for online data protection and cloud-based data protection

Data Protection Technologies

This section of the report includes educational information on each backup and disaster recovery technology, best practices and recommendations for implementing backup and data protection and considerations for SMBs on each of the following topics.

• Backup and recovery software
• Backing up virtual environments
• Backup to Tape
• Virtual Tape Libraries
• Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape
• *Cloud-based Backup
• File Synchronization
• Snapshot backups
• Bare metal recovery
• *Deduplication and Compression
• Continuous data protection
• Replication
• File versioning
• Encryption
• *Server mirroring
• *Server failover
• *Disaster Recovery

*New or expanded sections to the report this year

Competitive Landscape

Software, Appliance, Cloud vendors, Server Recovery and Disaster Recovery Vendors included in report.

• Acronis
• Actifio
• Agility Recovery
• Altaro
• AppAssure
• Arkeia
• Asigra
• Atempo
• Axcient
• Bacula
• Barracuda
• CA Technology
• Carbonite
• Cofio
• CommVault
• Datapreserve
• Digitiliti
• Druva Software
• Econ Technologies
• Egnyte
• EMC
• EMC MozyPro
• eVault
• FalconStor
• FarStone
• Geminare
• GFI
• Greenbytes
• HP Data Protector
• IBM Tivoli Continuous Data Protection for Files
• Idera
• Iomega
• Iron Mountain
• KineticD
• Macrium
• Marathon Technologies
• Microsoft Data Protection Manager
• MondoRescue
• NetGear
• Nexsan
• NeverFail Group
• Nine Technology
• NovaStor
• Overland Storage
• Parallels
• Peer Software
• Pro Softnet
• ProStor
• Quantum
• Quest
• Quorum Labs
• Rackspace
• Rebit
• Revinetix
• Robobac
• Roxio Retrospect
• SEP sesam
• SEPATON
• SonicWall
• SOS Online Backup
• SpiderOak
• StorageCraft
• StorServer
• SugarSync
• Symantec Backup Exec
• Symform
• SyncSort
• Tandberg InteliNAS
• Terabyte Unlimited
• Unitrends
• Veeam
• Vembu
• Venyu
• Vizioncore
• Zenith Infotech
• Zmanda

Use case profiles

• Small businesses
• Mid-sized businesses
• MSP

Outlook

• Forecast and Assumptions
• Market Context

Recommendations and Guidance

• General backup and recovery recommendations and best practices for SMBs
• Suitability of product offerings for SMB market

List of Tables