September 23, 2010 -- A few weeks ago I blogged about a backup software vendor that I had never heard of, despite the fact that they've been shipping product for more than four years. That was Cofio Software (see "A backup vendor you haven't heard of").
Afterwards I heard from a lot of data protection vendors wondering if I had ever heard of them (presumably because I hadn't written about them). I was aware of most of them, but one exception was AppAssure, which has been shipping its flagship Replay software suite since 2007.
If you're open to considering backup vendors outside of the Big Four (and given the relatively high readership of that Cofio post, many of you are), AppAssure is worth consideration.
Many of the company's executives hail from Symantec/Veritas (and AppAssure says that about 75% of its customers are former Backup Exec users) with some execs tracing their roots back to W Quinn Associates (which was acquired by Precise Software which was acquired by Veritas which was acquired by Symantec).
AppAssure claims 13 consecutive quarters of growth, and as of last month the company had exceeded its total 2009 revenues (which grew 268% over 2008 revenues), according to Steven Toole, AppAssure's chief marketing officer. The company also claims that Replay has accounted for more than 56 million backups on five petabytes+ of data.
The application-aware Replay4 software backs up the entire application stack, including app objects, files, operating systems and blocks with "near" continuous data protection (snapshots every 15 minutes).
The suite includes standard functionality such as backup and recovery, disaster recovery and cloud recovery, as well as all the specific features you might need in a data protection suite, including the elimination of backup windows, off-host processing, data deduplication and compression, VM failover, bare metal restore, corruption detection, virtualization, replication, fast backups (8GB/minute), etc.
And most of those features are bundled in what appears to be attractive pricing (exceptions include replication and virtualization, which are priced separately). For example, the base price is $899 per protected server, and that's for a perpetual (non-recurring) license. Specific pricing: $2,099 per VMware host with an unlimited number of guests, $1,499 for Hyper-V, $1,499 for SQL Server, and $2,099 for Exchange.
If that sounds intriguing, check out AppAssure's web site where you can get a free trial version of Replay.
Showing posts with label backup. Show all posts
Showing posts with label backup. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
A backup vendor you haven’t heard of
July 28, 2010 – It’s hard to imagine that there’s a backup software vendor out there that, until recently, I hadn’t heard of. And I’m guessing you haven’t heard of them either.
Cofio Software was formed in mid-2006 and has been shipping its flagship AIMstor data protection software for about a year. The company’s early adopters have been mostly in China, where users are apparently more open to trying something new and aren’t as tied to brand name products.
Some of Cofio’s founders (including Tony Cerqueira and Fabrice Helliker) were formerly at BakBone Software, but Cofio can trace its roots back to AT&T Bell Labs and the NetVault product line.
In addition to backup and restore, the AIMstor suite includes a host of other data protection applications and technologies, including data deduplication (target and source, with Change Byte Transfer technology), snapshots, real-time replication, continuous data protection (CDP), live/batch backup, bare metal recovery, and more.
However, in my opinion Cofio has two key differentiators vs. the more well-known backup vendors:
--All of Cofio’s data protection applications are built on a common code platform, or unified framework. In that sense, Cofio’s primary competitor may be CommVault, which also has a common code base for a variety of data protection applications. This is in contrast to the disparate, often non-integrated point products that vendors include in their data protections suites. It’s also in contrast to the need for users to buy various data protection applications from multiple vendors, which leads to management nightmares.
--AIMstor has a (seemingly) unique interface with drag and drop policies and data flow of physical and virtual machines and groups. It’s called a Workflow User Interface (WUI), and it has a whiteboard feel to it. Since I don’t use enterprise-class backup software, it’s hard for me to describe this interface. It’s the sort of thing that you need a demo for (see link below).
Although Cofio has been shipping AIMstor for about a year, the company just released the 2.2 version, which can be considered the first production release.
Cofio is in the process of recruiting VARs, and only has a handful of them in North America. One of those VARs is Cambridge Computer.
I asked Cambridge Computer CTO Jacob Farmer what he likes about AIMstor, and here’s his response:
"I just started working with them. I like the concept. In a sentence, you define policies and it protects your data. All other backup products just copy data on a scheduled basis.
Effectively, you tell the software:
- what data you want to protect
- what you need for recovery point
- what you need for recovery time
- what you need for retention
- where you want copies of the data stored
It also includes other aspects of data protection
-- immutability (enforcement of write-once)
-- user access audit logs
-- bare metal to disparate hardware "
The recently released version of AIMstor includes a lot of new features. For details, see the AIMstor 2.2 press release.
But like I said, this is the sort of product that you really need a demo on to understand it fully. Check out the short video demo on Cofio’s website to get started.
Or click here for a free trial version of the software.
Of course, this begs the question of whether or not the storage industry needs yet another backup vendor, but if you’re looking for something new and aren’t married to the big brand name vendors, Cofio’s AIMstor might be worth a test drive.
Related article from wikibon.org (Aug. 17, 2009):
Cofio Software wants SMBs on board with their data management platform
Related articles from InfoStor:
CommVault connects Simpana software to the cloud
CA debuts ARCserve r15, adds D2D software
Symantec beefs up SMB backup, security
Arkeia integrates backup with VMware vStorage
Related article from wikibon.org (Aug. 17, 2009):
Cofio Software wants SMBs on board with their data management platform
Cofio Software was formed in mid-2006 and has been shipping its flagship AIMstor data protection software for about a year. The company’s early adopters have been mostly in China, where users are apparently more open to trying something new and aren’t as tied to brand name products.
Some of Cofio’s founders (including Tony Cerqueira and Fabrice Helliker) were formerly at BakBone Software, but Cofio can trace its roots back to AT&T Bell Labs and the NetVault product line.
In addition to backup and restore, the AIMstor suite includes a host of other data protection applications and technologies, including data deduplication (target and source, with Change Byte Transfer technology), snapshots, real-time replication, continuous data protection (CDP), live/batch backup, bare metal recovery, and more.
However, in my opinion Cofio has two key differentiators vs. the more well-known backup vendors:
--All of Cofio’s data protection applications are built on a common code platform, or unified framework. In that sense, Cofio’s primary competitor may be CommVault, which also has a common code base for a variety of data protection applications. This is in contrast to the disparate, often non-integrated point products that vendors include in their data protections suites. It’s also in contrast to the need for users to buy various data protection applications from multiple vendors, which leads to management nightmares.
--AIMstor has a (seemingly) unique interface with drag and drop policies and data flow of physical and virtual machines and groups. It’s called a Workflow User Interface (WUI), and it has a whiteboard feel to it. Since I don’t use enterprise-class backup software, it’s hard for me to describe this interface. It’s the sort of thing that you need a demo for (see link below).
Although Cofio has been shipping AIMstor for about a year, the company just released the 2.2 version, which can be considered the first production release.
Cofio is in the process of recruiting VARs, and only has a handful of them in North America. One of those VARs is Cambridge Computer.
I asked Cambridge Computer CTO Jacob Farmer what he likes about AIMstor, and here’s his response:
"I just started working with them. I like the concept. In a sentence, you define policies and it protects your data. All other backup products just copy data on a scheduled basis.
Effectively, you tell the software:
- what data you want to protect
- what you need for recovery point
- what you need for recovery time
- what you need for retention
- where you want copies of the data stored
It also includes other aspects of data protection
-- immutability (enforcement of write-once)
-- user access audit logs
-- bare metal to disparate hardware "
The recently released version of AIMstor includes a lot of new features. For details, see the AIMstor 2.2 press release.
But like I said, this is the sort of product that you really need a demo on to understand it fully. Check out the short video demo on Cofio’s website to get started.
Or click here for a free trial version of the software.
Of course, this begs the question of whether or not the storage industry needs yet another backup vendor, but if you’re looking for something new and aren’t married to the big brand name vendors, Cofio’s AIMstor might be worth a test drive.
Related article from wikibon.org (Aug. 17, 2009):
Cofio Software wants SMBs on board with their data management platform
Related articles from InfoStor:
CommVault connects Simpana software to the cloud
CA debuts ARCserve r15, adds D2D software
Symantec beefs up SMB backup, security
Arkeia integrates backup with VMware vStorage
Related article from wikibon.org (Aug. 17, 2009):
Cofio Software wants SMBs on board with their data management platform
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