This past week I had the pleasure of representing Bocada as one of the sponsors for Curtis Preston’s Backup Central Live events in San Jose and San Diego. As a sponsor we were able to participate in a user Expo along with a presentation session. Any time you can have an intimate conversation with customers about their environment and their data protection successes and failures, in my opinion, is when product marketing guys like me can always get good information. I have to say that there were a couple of good take aways from these events that I thought were interesting.
Backup & Recovery; it’s all about the money!
First of all, when those of us in the industry think or talk about Backup and Recovery we think about getting the right backup solution that interfaces with all the latest storage technology so that we can be smart and efficient with our backup and recovery process. We know of all the major players and what features and functionally they bring to the table as well as the pros and cons of each, but that is not the case for the average user. I had numerous conversations with Administrators to CIO’s who were either using extremely old backup software or were in the process of looking at new technologies in the backup and recovery space. There were a few that were using scripts and manual operations to protect the data in their environment. What does this really mean? It means that no matter how many shiny new products get introduced to the market, there will always be a large group of organizations (and customers) that will be extremely late or apprehensive to adopt them. I think this will change as there is simple, tighter integration between software and hardware vendors, and vendors continue to offer cohesive solutions at a cheaper entry point. When you look at what we do here at Bocada, our solutions are developed with this thought in mind, provide a solution that allows customers to manage and report on their data protection environment no matter which backup solution(s) they deploy.
Virtualization + Backup is like buying pants one size too big; it has room to grow
The second glaring observation that kept hitting me in the face was that even though virtualization is a hot topic which can be found on every technology publication or website, the average user is still struggling to find their way into virtualization bliss. If a user has settled on a virtualization vendor they are then faced with another challenge, what’s the best way to protect my data? Once again this is a conversation with a lot of options and even more vendors that are looking to solve the problem, but how do you solve a problem when the customer treats VMs like physical servers? This fascinates me because now when you purchase VMware vSphere you get VMware Data recovery, a VM backup application (Which Bocada can report on!), so at least there is a cost effective option to protect the data on the VMs they deploy. For more information on VMware Data Recovery click here.
Treating VMs like physical servers, what do I mean by that? During the sessions at Backup Central Live Curtis polled the attendees and asked how they currently backup the data on their virtual machines. There were two responses; snapshots/API or agents in the VM and I thought most customers were using API’s and boy was I wrong. The result of the survey of over 160 participants told me that instead of using VMware API’s or advanced snapshots, customers are still installing agents into the VM’s and backing them up like physical machines. What this tells me is that either users still feel safe using the old way or the price of the API/Snapshot approach is still priced too high for the average virtualization user. For the customers that were willing to share, price was the key.
To sum up my Backup Central Live experience I have to say that it was refreshing to get such overwhelming positive user feedback and response to our new virtualization data protection service management product, Bocada Vision. The attendees appreciated the fact that Vision integrates with VMware and utilizes agentless technology to report on data protection solutions from Quest, Veeam, and Symantec. No matter which way they deploy and protect their VMs, customers repeatedly shared with me that they are looking for data protection and virtualization solutions that offer the most bang for their buck. This is right up our alley as Bocada offers real solutions that customers can utilize to help them manage whatever ever data protection products they deploy.
Ralph Wynn
Product Marketing Manager Bocada
twitter: @ralphwynn
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