Veritas Backup Exec Protects Critical Data in Multi-Cloud World

Veritas Technologies LLC announced advancements to Backup Exec, a unified data protection solution for virtual, physical, and multi-cloud environments utilized by small and mid-sized businesses around the world.

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With this release, customers and partners can benefit from a new subscription-based model that simplifies their buying experience and gives businesses flexibility in selecting storage and pricing options that are suited for their needs. In addition, customers will soon be able to visualize their protected data using Information Map, enabling them to have access to a dynamic, real-time picture of their data assets. This level of intelligence helps organizations ensure compliance and provide insights that can lead to better business outcomes.

More and more small businesses and growing enterprises are turning to the cloud to support their digital transformation efforts, with Software as a Service (SaaS) and private cloud usage both being above 40%, according to IDC ⁽¹⁾.

However, as organizations of all sizes migrate their data and workloads to the cloud, they face major challenges, including an inability to visualize and protect their data on-premises and in complex multi-cloud and hybrid environments.

This announcement directly addresses these challenges, builds on recently announced cloud integrations, and provides customers and partners with new solutions and licensing options that can play a key role in advancing data protection and data visibility for SMBs.

Increasing flexibility with Backup Exec subscription-based pricing
With the company’s new subscription-based licensing options, available in one-, two- or three-year terms, Backup Exec customers have choice and added flexibility when deploying data protection solutions within their organizations.

Through this subscription model, organizations will be able to optimize their backup costs by selecting the data protection option that is suited for their backup needs today. As their business needs change, they can make adjustments and expand to other subscription-based licenses as necessary. In addition, subscription customers will get immediate access to product updates and new features while their licenses are active.

Customers can choose between three already-available subscription-based licenses for Backup Exec – Bronze, Silver or Gold – depending on their data protection requirements.

• Backup Exec Subscription Bronze: Protection for physical and virtual file servers on-premises and in the cloud

• Backup Exec Subscription Silver: Protection for physical and virtual file servers, databases and applications on-premises and in the cloud

• Backup Exec Subscription Gold: Protection for physical and virtual file servers, databases and applications on-premises and in the cloud with centralized management for the Bakup Exec servers in multi-site environments

“Backup Exec has always offered customers exceptional unified end-to-end data protection. But, now, with subscription-based pricing options, more customers will be able to take advantage of the offerings,” says Caroline Kiel, CEO, PingUs Solutions GmbH & Co. KG. “As a partner, we will be able to share the dramatically simplified Backup Exec buying experience with our customers and help protect their data seamlessly across physical, virtual and cloud environments.“

Arming Backup Exec customers with global data visibility
The Information Map ⁽²⁾ integration, available as part of Information Map in the coming quarters, will provide Backup Exec customers with an interactive, real-time view of their unstructured data assets. In addition to visualizing data being protected by Backup Exec, customers that also hold an Information Map entitlement will be able to take advantage of Information Map’s connectors to visualize data across 23 data sources for both on-premises and cloud-based storage repositories.

Based on this level of intelligence, customers can make more informed storage decisions, identify areas of risk and make better choices about what data to retain, migrate or delete. This integration will also help customers meet and comply with data privacy regulations around the world, including the European Union’s forthcoming General Data Protection Regulation.

“In preparation for tougher new regulations such as GDPR, organizations are trying to make sense of their infrastructure, data and information governance needs in order to avoid heavy fines,” says Archana Venkatraman, storage analyst, European datacenter research, IDC. “Our research reveals that data protection, security and compliance is as much of a top IT investment priority for small and mid-sized organizations ⁽³⁾ (34% of respondents) as it is for large enterprises (36%).“

Advancing data protection in cloud with Backup Exec
These innovations build on an array of key enhancements with Backup Exec that further optimize data management in the multi-cloud world:

• Deduplication to the cloud helps to reduce network usage and storage requirements and can result in faster, more efficient backups

• S3-compatible cloud storage can be used by Backup Exec customers as a low-cost backup destination with no additional licenses needed

• CloudConnect Optimizer automatically detects and corrects variations in the backup settings and helps Backup Exec customers optimize available network bandwidth utilization.

“Small and mid-sized organizations will continue to spread data across virtual, physical and multi-cloud environments and data protection will become more complex as data volumes grow by 33% each year ⁽⁴⁾,” says Simon Jelley, GM, Backup Exec, Veritas. “With the new version of Backup Exec, we are helping customers protect and visualize their data wherever it resides, and with flexible subscription licensing options, they can easily scale their data protection needs based on their actual capacity requirements.“

⁽¹⁾ IDC InfoBrief, sponsored by Veritas, Key Considerations for Data Protection and Cloud on Your Digital Journey, October 2017
⁽²⁾ Information Map is a chargeable product
⁽³⁾ Companies with 250-999 employees
⁽⁴⁾ Source: Results of a Spiceworks survey of 906 IT decision-makers across the globe in 2016