May 2006
Total Recall: Challenges and Opportunities for the Data Protection Industry

Within the multibillion-dollar storage industry, the data protection market is undergoing significant structural changes. These changes are being driven by several factors – customers' rapidly changing requirements driven by compliance and their strategic needs for accessing large volumes of data quickly, as well as the falling price of disk drive technology. In addition, the ever-shrinking (or altogether disappearing) window of time for backing up data is overwhelming today's tape backup technologies.

The 451 Group believes these changes present opportunities for a crop of young startups, which are moving quickly into the market with a range of different technologies to address these issues. The bounty of new technology will lead to a flurry of M&A activity, as incumbent vendors look to maintain their position in the marketplace and defend against large and small competitors.

This report identifies three next-generation data protection (NGDP) approaches in the marketplace: virtual tape, data reduction and continuous data protection. For the next five years, tape and disk will coexist as tools for tackling the data protection challenge. In the short term, the more successful technologies will be those that integrate with a customer's environment with the least disruption. Leading the pack are companies using virtual tape technologies, which are claimed to be easier to integrate than alternative disk backup products. In the long term, however, tape will become marginalized as a frontline data protection tool as users migrate to disk technologies. And 451 analysts also believe there will be a functional convergence as vendors evolve individual point products into broader data protection platforms.

In any emerging market, there is uncertainty about what technology is best suited for the challenges ahead. This report sets out to demystify the various NGDP tools being readied for the market, and it analyzes the market opportunity. It provides in-depth competitive assessments of more than 30 vendors in this market, along with lucid descriptions of how the technology works and its inherent shortcomings. There are also several in-depth discussions on gap analysis, as well as market taxonomies and a look at the expected M&A activity in the NGDP marketplace.

This report is more than 150 pages in length and was written by Simon Robinson, Research Director for Storage at the 451 Group, with support from Lee Bruno, Editorial Director, and Chris Noble, Director of Research.

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About The 451 Group

The 451 Group is an independent technology industry analyst company focused on the business of enterprise IT innovation. The company’s analysts provide critical and timely insight into the market and competitive dynamics of innovation in emerging technology segments. Clients of the company – at vendor, investor, service- provider and end-user organizations – rely on 451 insight to support both strategic and tactical decision-making for competitive advantage.

The 451 Group is headquartered in New York, with offices in key locations, including San Francisco, London and Boston. For additional information on the company or to apply for trial access to its services, go to: www.the451group.com