The expert guide to enterprise backup software

Editor's note

As IT environments become more advanced, the job of backing up and retrieving data also grows in complexity. Enterprise backup software can ease this task by streamlining processes. Data backup continues to converge with other IT disciplines toward this end, and processes that have traditionally been performed separately have come under backup's wing. Recent feature updates to backup software platforms include snapshot management, disaster recovery (DR) elements, support for cloud, virtual machine (VM) protection and archiving functionality.

There have also been developments aimed at speeding restore times as backup data sets have continued to grow. For example, recovery-in-place (also known as instant recovery) has emerged as a way to run production VMs directly from a backup instance during recovery.

This guide provides stories on the latest upgrades from some of the top enterprise backup software vendors, information on where backup software works best in a computing environment and important considerations to keep in mind when purchasing data backup software.