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Product reliability
"The main thing you want in your backup system is reliability,"
said Yoho. "They [CA and HP] don't go down, and they don't have to
have a lot of patches."
Our product reliability section gauges how well each backup
software product meets service-level requirements, how often
unplanned patches are required, how easy patches are to apply and
so on. For this category, enterprise products had the widest spread
among scores of all of the categories. BakBone NetVault achieved
its second highest category score with a 6.14. The bellwether score
we've detected in all of our surveys is for the statement
"Patches/updates can be applied nondisruptively." In this regard,
NetVault garnered an exceptionally high 6.77. Veritas NetBackup's
4.43 was the only negative reliability category rating of any
enterprise product, and the product was also given a 4.01 for
nondisruptive patch management. We've determined that there's a
more direct connection between patch management and overall product
satisfaction than any other single element.
But given the experiences of Johnson & Wales University's
Price, CommVault Galaxy's 5.45 score for upgrade proficiency may be
something of an understatement. "To download all the updates, it's
a two-click thing," said Price. "To install the updates on every
machine, it's another three clicks." He said that he was able to do
a service pack upgrade on 150 servers across four campuses in
approximately an hour and a half.
The overall reliability ranking for SMB backup software products
wasn't particularly inspiring either. Veritas Backup Exec won the
category, but with a relatively low 4.81. EMC Retrospect wasn't far
behind with a 4.76, while CA BrightStor ARCserve Backup suffered
its worst category score with a very negative 3.45.
We also found that the statement "This product's error handling
is easy and intuitive" revealed a low level of user satisfaction.
Although not all products scored poorly, the responses to this
statement were among the lower scores in the category for every
vendor.
Would you buy again?
We've never found a direct correlation between user satisfaction
and a willingness to repurchase the product. Not all organizations
use a "best in class" purchase criterion and all of them factor
numerous other considerations into their decision. Moreover,
organizations can't retool their B/R environment annually and
generally need a compelling reason to change.
However, for organizations consolidating operations or
considering a change, and for those companies that are still
developing their B/R strategy, knowing which products customers
would buy all over again is instructive.
In the 2006 survey, CommVault Galaxy was highest rated in this
regard with 92.9% of its respondents, indicating a willingness to
repurchase. IBM TSM received such consideration from 82.5% of its
respondents followed by HP Data Protector (82.2%), BakBone NetVault
(76.9%) and Veritas NetBackup (76.1%). EMC NetWorker was last in
the enterprise group with 59.7%. Among SMB products, Veritas Backup
Exec had 69.7% positive responses, followed by EMC Retrospect
(52.4%) and CA BrightStor ARCserve Backup (39.3%).
Although products must meet a threshold of functionality,
products that delivered trouble-free operation were generally more
highly regarded than those with the longest feature lists.
Tech support and Sales force competence in backup software:
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