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Security firm Symantec is taking aim at the often complex and time-consuming process of backup and recovery services with the release of NetBackup 7.5 and Backup Exec 2012 software and cloud services, as well as Backup Exec Small Business Edition for midmarket companies. In addition, the companys NetBackup Auto Image Replication (AIR) allows customers to eliminate volumes of physical assets and prioritize files that can be sent over the network.
Symantec’s strategy is to eliminate 80 percent of the operating cost of backup by delivering an integrated platform that replaces multiple solutions typically used in backup today. Symantec backup appliances can drive down costs even more than traditional appliances by combining backup software and deduplication into a single solution supported by one vendor, that is fast to deploy and easy to manage.
Symantec provides one solution for all backups, whether they are based on tape, disk, or in physical or virtual environments. Customers can recover any application or system to a virtual machine whether they have the hardware or not. Physical to virtual recovery is now included for free in Backup Exec, and new backup to virtual (B2V) technology is also available to accelerate the migration from physical to virtual servers as part of the backup process.
Symantec recently surveyed more than 1,400 IT professionals worldwide on their backup practices and their ability to recover information in the event of a disaster. The findings reveal that traditional approaches to backup are broken and a new approach is vitally needed. Nearly half (49 percent) of respondents said they can’t meet service level agreements (SLAs) due to too much data, while 72 percent of respondents would switch backup product if speed doubled and 28 percent say they have too many backup tools.
Organizations average four backup solutions to protect physical systems, and three for virtual; 42 percent of respondents believe that their virtualization backup is not adequately or perfectly working. More than a third (36 percent) of respondents would not bet their paychecks that 100 percent of backed-up data could be recovered.
According to Symantec’s 2011 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey, SMBs are not making disaster preparedness a priority until they experience a disaster or data loss. Half of respondents do not have a plan in place, and 41 percent said that it never occurred to them to put together a disaster recovery plan. The survey data reveals that the cost of not being prepared is high, putting an SMB at risk of going out of business.