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Markets, M-19-8730 C. DiCenzo, R. Paquet
Research Note
9 May 2003
2003 Enterprise Backup/Restore Magic Quadrant
The backup/restore software market is maturing, with a limited number of vendors competing for the bulk of the revenue. Smaller vendors on this updated Magic Quadrant must execute well to survive.
Vendors that appear in the Gartner Enterprise Backup/Restore Magic Quadrant (see Figure 1) have demonstrated the ability to scale and address the heterogeneous backup requirements of the Global 2000. (For more information, see "Enterprise Backup/Restore MQ Evaluation Criteria.") Smaller vendors will continue to deliver new functionality to the market before some of the larger vendors. The enterprise backup/restore software market is a maturing market, with 10 vendors capturing more than $10 million in new license revenue in 2002; however, only two of the 10 reported more than $100 million. As the amount of data stored continues its unabated growth, businesses are placing greater demands on storage management, specifically enterprise backup/restore. The business requirement for continuous access, coupled with the added complexity of the growing disk "farms," requires new backup strategies to deliver on recovery-time objectives. Data loss is unacceptable and business continuity is mandatory. Even applications that historically have not been viewed as business-critical (for example, e-mail) require 24x7 availability. These factors have caused "backup windows" to disappear and forced recovery times to shrink. Enterprise backup is not an option. It is the most commonly purchased enterprise application.
Core Topic
Enterprise Management: Storage Management
Key Issue
Which product and service vendors will become leaders in storage management?
Figure 1
Enterprise Backup/Restore Magic Quadrant
Challengers Leaders
Niche Players Visionaries
As of May 2003 Ability to Execute Completeness of Vision . Hewlett-Packard . Syncsort . Atempo . EMC . Computer Associates . BakBone Software . CommVault Systems . Legato Systems . IBM . Veritas
Source: Gartner Research (May 2003)
Because the purchase of backup software is so widespread, the enterprise backup market is fairly mature. The majority of enterprise backup market sales represent the replacement of a current vendor, consolidation of backup resources or support for new applications/servers. As with any maturing market, the differences between offerings are subtle and thus, the differentiator becomes the vendor's ability to execute.
New storage technologies continue to require product enhancements, and the push for a focus on recovery is driving vendors to leverage disk as well as tape. Better support for application recovery provides new revenue opportunities for vendors that can deliver effective solutions. The emergence of lower-cost Serial ATA disk drives is increasing the interest in disk backup and the better use of replication for recovery of mission-critical applications.
Veritas, IBM and Legato Systems Continue in the Leaders Quadrant
Veritas' NetBackup is the top-selling backup product for the third year in a row, since finally outselling Veritas' workgroup product Backup Exec in 2000. Veritas again leads on the Magic Quadrant (see "Enterprise Backup/Restore Market: Magic Quadrant"). It has successfully created market demand, industry recognition
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and leveraged partner relationships. The company added bare metal restore — technology that automates the server recovery process — with the acquisition of The Kernal Group in December 2001 and added a Vault option to expand its media management capabilities with the version 4.5 release in April 2002. A feature pack release in February 2003 introduced NetBackup Instant Recovery Option for faster recovery with data snapshots.
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) is seeing new demand for its use of disks in the backup process, a feature that was built into the original design for TSM and is now being used more extensively for disk backup. The Sysback bare metal restore product for AIX was moved into the Tivoli storage group from IBM Global Services and will be the basis for expanded platform support for bare metal restore options. TSM has the most extensive language support of all the products in this Magic Quadrant.
Legato has refocused on innovation with its newly released Networker 7, expanding its disk backup support and adding new support for OpenVMS on Alpha and Linux on zSeries. The company is effectively leveraging its expanded portfolio of media management, active archiving, replication and Hierarchical Storage Manager (HSM) capabilities to gain new visibility in the market and capture new customers. A new Legato Networker Business Edition was released to target the workgroup, department and small-to-midsize enterprise.
Computer Associates Continues in the Challenger Quadrant CA continues to focus on expanding the penetration of its BrightStor Enterprise Backup product, released in July 2001, by leveraging technology from the Alexandria and ARCserve products into a new backup solution. With the 10.5 version, targeted for a May 2003 release, the backup product will contain BrightStor Portal technology, providing an enterprisewide monitoring and reporting platform for all backup/restore operations, including support for competitor backup products. Integration with other BrightStor and Unicenter products continues.
BakBone Software and CommVault Systems Occupy the Visionary Quadrant
BakBone and CommVault led the enterprise backup market in growth in 2002. CommVault is working to expand its visibility in the market by broadening its portfolio of storage management products. It announced its QiNetix platform in October 2002 and delivered its QiNetix Data Migrator for Windows and Exchange, and QiNetix Quick Recovery for snapshot-based recovery for
Windows, Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, Solaris and Oracle. In March, CommVault added a NetWare backup server and enhanced disk-to-disk-to-tape support.
BakBone has been dramatically increasing its revenue and customer base by focusing on an exclusively indirect model and by being early to market with support for new applications. BakBone's focus on Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) support continued in April 2003 with the expansion of its base NDMP support to include application plug-in modules for snapshot-to-tape and snapshot management. BakBone supplied the agent technology that Network Appliance manufactures to extend its SnapVault disk backup product to Solaris, HP-UX and Windows 2000.
Hewlett-Packard (HP), Atempo, Syncsort and EMC Occupy the Niche Quadrant
HP's Data Protector product (formerly OmniBack II) continues to provide a backup solution for the HP direct sales channel, but it has been unable to gain recognition beyond the HP customer base. Data Protector 5.0, released in August 2002, provides the ability to selectively schedule tape-only, disk-only, and combined disk- and tape-based "zero downtime backups" that generate tape backup and mirror splits for purposes of instant recovery. Product revenue has been flat over the past three years, but still provides a respectable revenue stream for HP.
EMC's Symmetrix-focused EDM product targets a focused set of customers. It moved from an X-Windows graphical user interface (GUI) to a Java-based GUI in the August 2002 release of v.5.0. The product also added a new automated event management feature that shows correlated events related to a given error and gives suggested resolutions. Atempo continues to focus on its goal to be No. 1 in the European market, even as it looks to deliver products to the worldwide market. With the April 2003 release of Time Navigator 3.7, the product has begun to offer a universal agent based on NDMP. Syncsort is focused on expanding its channel and has signed a deal to package Backup Express with every Snap Appliance Guardian filer.
Bottom Line: The best solution for any given situation can be anywhere in this Enterprise Backup/Restore Magic Quadrant. However, enterprises should place emphasis on ability to execute when evaluating enterprisewide backup vendors. Backup is often a decision that enterprises must live with for the long term. Furthermore, in a mature market, don't expect dramatic changes to vendor positioning unless acquisitions occur. Additionally, after a couple of years without acquisition
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activity, enterprises should expect there will likely be changes as the market consolidates.
