In 2007, all of the major backup and recovery software vendors refreshed their product lines. Previously separate functions such as Continuous Data Protection (CDP) and data deduplication are being integrated into mainstream solutions. The trend is toward providing a single management pane of glass for data protection and particularly for data restore.

Beyond the Backup Window

Aside from the critical issue of backup speed, most of the traditional challenges of data protection relate not to backup but to restore. The world’s fastest and most efficient backup process has no value if the subsequent restore attempts fail, result in inconsistent files, or requires an error-prone human process.

Success on the restore side is typically measured in terms of how well a solution meets recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO). With increased importance of regulatory compliance, recovery granularity objective (RGO) is also important.