Data Protection and Recovery Management (DPRM) has evolved out of backup reporting tools. At the basic level, backup reporting tools were for straight-up reporting on the success or failure of backup. DPRM has grown to include the following functionality:

• Event notification. Goes beyond standard pass/fail reporting to show more detailed alerts and warnings to identify backup failure points. These events can often be automatically forwarded via e-mail to designated parties.
• Capacity planning. Gives the backup administrator a better picture of the state of the storage. Shows how much space is available and how quickly it will need to be expanded.
• Utilization. Reveals which individuals or business units are using (or abusing) storage capacity. This view allows IT to reign in the “storage hogs” (as Servergraph puts it).
• Compliance and Service Level Agreement (SLA) tracking. Tracks if backups are in compliance with regulatory restrictions and internal SLAs. Also tracks progress and improvements in meeting compliance and SLA goals over time.