A data protection strategy should include on-premises, cloud apps

Enterprise data protection has evolved to provide more than just backup and DR. Today's storage vendors can create a data protection strategy that addresses a variety of data recovery requirements both on premises and in the public cloud.

Many organizations require virtualization-specific capabilities and the ability to move workloads among public clouds, virtual servers and physical servers. To address these needs, vendors are offering appliance-based, platform-focused and cloud-native data protection products that support a wide range of hardware and software platforms.

Before selecting data backup software, you must first determine your organization's needs and identify which features are most important. For example, which OSes, environments, business-critical applications and endpoints must the software support? Does it need to back up off-host VMs? What level of support does your organization require from the vendor? Answering these questions can help you evaluate and select the product that will best address your organization's data protection strategy.

This buyer's guide examines products from 13 industry-leading data protection vendors that provide virtualization-specific functionality as well as backup protection for organizations of all sizes. And the product roundup compares numerous features and functionality, including deployment options, environments supported and DR capabilities.

By

• Amy Novotny, Senior Managing Editor