In the recently published Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Disk based Backup and Recovery, the analyst firm saw a trend toward increasing consideration of a cloud-based recovery implementation. Garther found that in selected cases, large-enterprise server data is being moved to a cloud-based backup/recovery solution, but the predominant amount of interest has been for midsize enterprise servers and branch-office and desktop/laptop data.
In the large enterprise, the most common implementations have been for remote-office and desktop/laptop data. Gartner worldwide survey data suggests that, in future years, cloud-based recovery solutions will increasingly be evaluated by organizations of all sizes.
Many organizations continue rearchitecting their backup infrastructures and support procedures in an effort to modernize their approach to handle new data types and large workload volumes, and to improve backup and restore times. Disk-based solutions, including backup directly to disk, server virtualization backup features and deduplication technology, are among the key items being sought. Mission-critical workloads are increasingly being deployed in server-virtualized environments, making VMware, Citrix Systems XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V backup more of a mainstream requirement. The cloud delivery model for backup/recovery is increasingly being considered for enterprise recovery requirements — especially for desktop/laptops and remote offices. The scope of enterprise backup has expanded to sometimes include remote-office and branch-office locations, as well as desktop and laptop protection, particularly for key company executives.
Support for virtual environments is a key strength of the highest placed Niche Player, Asigra Inc. Asigra started supporting virtual environments almost six years ago. At that time, there were no backup APIs available from server virtualization vendors, so Asigra used the native APIs from VMware and Xen to provide support for VMs. Today, Asigra supports VMware through the vStorage APIs (VADP), as well as through native APIs. Asigra states that the native API method allows for greater granularity, to the file/message level. Asigra is not a household name in the backup and recovery market; however, the company is taking steps to change this. It invested significant resources in 2009 and 2010 in promoting awareness of the cloud backup market and Asigra’s place in it. Asigra is the founder and holds the position of chair of the SNIA Special Interest Group on Cloud Backup and Recovery.
