451 Research Touts Zetta.net’s Speed and Software-Only Approach

Zetta.net (Zetta, Inc.) announced a report issued by 451 Research LLC that distinguishes its enterprise cloud backup and DR solution from competing solutions in the market.

According to the report, Zetta.net’s cloud-based solution has two clear differentiators: backup and recovery performance, and the fact that, unlike almost all of its rivals, it does not require a hardware appliance.

Speed and Performance
The report explains that Zetta.net’s performance edge comes, in part, because of the company’s expertise in Internet technology. By contrast, many of its rivals began as on-premise backup vendors and grew into the online side of offsite backup and recovery.

As a result of Zetta.net’s focus on Internet performance, WAN-optimized technology is built into the solution for faster backup and recovery. Many of Zetta.net’s customers have hundreds of terabytes of production capacity and some are backing up and recovering as much as 5TB per day.

While recovery speed is critical for the firm, tape backup had inherent complexity that created more issues for backup and recovery than it solved, causing delays that could endanger business activities.

“Often, something would go wrong, like a tape being dismounted before a backup had completed,” said Jason Webb, IT manager, Aero Law Group, a firm providing transactional legal services to 500 clients in the airline and aircraft industry WW. “It reached a point where we weren’t achieving successful daily backups more than twice a week.“

Bucking Trend With Software-Only Model
Among hybrid cloud backup vendors, the report points out, Zetta.net is virtually the only software-only vendor.

“Against the other vendors in the hybrid cloud backup arena, Zetta’s primary differentiators are speed and its software-only approach, which, compared with appliance-based alternatives, can translate into lower costs,” said the report’s author, senior storage analyst Dave Simpson.

In addition to reduced costs for customers, Zetta.net’s appliance-free approach is an advantage to MSPs because it requires less management and maintenance. MSPs benefit from a low cost solution that does not require any new hardware to install – their customers can be up and running in minutes, with backups and data recovery performed from anywhere.

“I like that Zetta has its own data centers, rather than using somebody else’s, such as Amazon S3,” said Webb. “This gives us more confidence about the security of our data.”

In terms of support, Webb notes that Zetta’s tech support resolves questions quickly without extra hold time on the phone.

“I’ve never had a bad support experience with Zetta, I’m really happy with it-not just the backup service, but the company as a whole. Set up took only 15 minutes and backups happened automatically. With Zetta, it’s set it and forget it,” said Webb.

“Zetta’s cloud backup delivers enterprise performance that is easy to manage through my partner portal. Backups are fast and reliable, allowing me to focus on other aspects of my business,” said Jeff Zdan, VP, network systems, DataServ Corporation, a MSP that delivers business and technology solutions in the Midwest.

Zetta.net also continues to experience growth. In 2013, its customer base grew 130%, while its partner network grew 310%.

To download the report