How to Choose the Best Enterprise Backup Software in 2023? Best Enterprise Backup Solutions and Tools.

The different components and interoperability of a backup system can determine if it is the right solution for you

Top 20 criteria to choose the best enterprise backup software

Although it can be rare, situations or incidents usually arise at some point of time in an organization which can lead to information loss. This can directly jeopardize an organization’s functions, and whether the data losses are small (archives, such as spreadsheets, documents, presentations, etc.) or very large (such as terabytes of data of entire databases, program repositories, computer images, multimedia files, etc.), the effects on a corporation can be disastrous.

For these reasons it is vital that big enterprise companies have systems that allow them to protect themselves from these events. One of the fundamental strategies is to correctly backup organization’s data using enterprise-level solutions that store them in secure sites for later retrieval, if necessary.

What should be the characteristics of the best enterprise-grade backup software? If we assume that a typical enterprise company organizes and processes an ongoing and increasing volume of information (petabytes of data) in a big data center with thousands of servers, this should be taken into account when defining best solutions for enterprise backup. Some characteristics of the best backup software for enterprise are that it should:

1. Be reliable and guarantee the execution of backup and recovery operations in an integral and consistent manner, without loss or omission of data.
2. Allow backup and recovery administration to be multi-channel, but complete. To do this, it must have utilities or tools as part of the application that are cross-platform, easy to use, offer functionality to users with various expertise levels in configuration, administration and monitoring of backups.
3. Have the capability to adapt to heterogeneous environments, since in many enterprise-level organizations it is common to use software and hardware of different types, characteristics and manufacturers, including servers, NAS devices, tape drives, operating systems, virtualization systems, applications, and databases.
4. Provide the ability to grow and adapt in accordance with the rising data volumes and data retention requirements. This growth should not be impeded by a backup solution which becomes too expensive as it scales up.
5. Facilitate the implementation of enterprise-specific backup tasks necessary to perform effective data backup strategies. These can include: condition- and event-based backup stopping and starting services, creating and deleting files, replication and migration of data, validating the execution of a backup job, generating alerts when job is not completed successfully, backup scheduling and others.
6. Integrate with enterprise monitoring systems and send notifications of backup operation processes. Additionally notifications can be setup through emails, push notifications on mobile devices, web browsers, etc..
7. Allow the configuration of different levels of backup that conform to an organization’s backup policies in an efficient way, in terms of proper RTO and RPO. Enterprise-grade organizations typically require full, incremental, differential and virtual full (synthetic) backup levels.
8. Provide the options to execute several concurrent instances of backup and recovery. These elements should have the ability to be automated so that the process is carried out efficiently and with minimum execution time, without affecting the consistency of data.
9. Allow the organization to manage the storage resources where the backed up data is stored. In enterprise-level company this may include disks, tape drives, auto-changers, cloud storage devices, NAS or SAN devices or online storage applications.
10. Offer tools to manage backed up data in various cases such as:
    • Applying IT legal compliance regulations;
    • Applying compliance with quality standards, such as ISO;
    • Applying compliance with methodologies such as ITIL.
11. Allow interrelation with enterprise BI tools that can provide backups’ statistics, and in this way generate reports and dashboards that can be used in companies for diverse activities such as storage capacity planning, bandwidth state, system functional indicators, and more.
12. Provide tools that optimize the data volume transmittion during the backups in order to save storage capacity and network bandwidth at an enterprise-grade scale. This is done using both hardware and software capabilities: 2-side deduplication, comm line compression and other methods.
13. Allow integration with mobile devices, phones or tablets, including not only notifications but also administration and monitoring capabilities.
14. Support data backup in hybrid cloud environments, since it allows the implementation of a high availability environment with adequate levels of redundancy. Cloud storage can be used as a media itself, and also needs to be backed up as an endpoint. Cloud connectivity needs to include Amazon S3, Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud and Glacier at a minimum.
15. Provide strongest encryption of the backed up data (AES 128, AES192, AES256 or blowfish as well as EFS for Windows) in order to guarantee its privacy and guarantee TSL (SSL) communication between backup system components. Storage daemons also need to be encrypted.
16. Be FIPS 140-2 compiant and provide advanced security controls incl. CRAM-MD5 authentication between components, various immutability features, SIEM integration, silent data correption detection and automated malware detection.
17. Support a wide range of virtualization systems incl. VMware, Hyper V, Citrix Xen, Red Hat Virtualization, Azure VM, KVM and Proxmox. Many of these hypervisors can be used in a single enterprise-level organization in a single data center. It’s important to be able to backup not only the full VM images, but also to be able to restore single files from them as it can affect restore speed on enterprise levels.
18. Support a wide range of databases incl. MS SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SAP HANA and Sybase. With enterprise-grade DBMS systems it’s important to ensure the ability to backup databases incrementally and have the PITR (point-in-time recovery) features.
19. Support container-based infrastructures that use Docker or Kubernetes and be able to backup Docker volumes and Kubernetes clusters as it’s the usual way to build enterprise-grade container systems.
20. Be able to perform bare metal recovery for both Windows and Linux as a part of organization’s disaster recovery strategy

All these characteristics contribute to protecting the enterprise-grade IT infrastructure of a company, including operating systems, server, user data and applications, to avoid potentially catastrophic data losses that may affect a company’s business continuity.

Request for proposal and how it works for enterprise backup industry

When it comes to choosing the actual solutions and suppliers, there is a method companies often use to decide the best enterprise backup solutions for the company’s interests. This process is called ‘Request for Proposal’ (RFP). A well-defined RFP template allows companies to prevent wasting money and manpower searching for the best enterprise backup software compared with manual search in the long software list, and even the end results are affected by that.

A request for proposal is a specific document that is used to obtain proposals from organizations that are providing services or products – the ones providing backup and recovery solutions, in our case. Since an RFP typically covers a vast amount of different needs and buying models, there’s no single way of doing it. But there are some general recommendations and a typical process outline. There are also some enterprise-grade specifics that we’ll mention as well.

The entire process of RFP for enterprise backup and recovery solutions might be split in four steps:

• Data collection and preparations;
• The creation of RFP for backup and recovery solutions;
• Preparations for the evaluation process;
• Evaluation and negotiations with the backup and recovery solutions’ providers.

Data collection and other preparations

As mentioned, the general process differs depending on the target market, but there’s a good middle-ground base that you can work with and there’s a few backup-related specifics there, as well. The first step includes team assembly and timeline development.

Team assembly is not exactly mandatory but heavily recommended nevertheless. It helps a lot if the roles are defined to begin with to avoid confusion and blame shifting. Usually there are at least four categories of participants:

• A team/project manager that makes sure the entire process is working properly and meeting all of the deadlines;
• Key stakeholders that’ll be reviewing both the drafts of the RFP and the final version of it;
• Creators of the RFP – the ones doing the drafting and creation of the request for a backup and recovery solution;
• Reviewers – employees that will be responsible for the application analysis at the end of the process.

After forming the team in question, it’s also important to establish and set in stone a timeline for the entire process, from the date of the first draft being completed down to the time when you’ll stop accepting applications from best enterprise backup solutions vendors.

The creation of RFP

After you’ve completely established your timeline, your designated RFP writer can begin with drafting the RFP, including performing all of the necessary research on the backup industry in general.

There’s a few recommendations that work for nearly all of application types, but we’ll be going over parts of the RFP that are suited for backup and recovery companies and solutions. As with almost any document, a proper RFP includes a few chapters that present different questions and are handled differently at the analysis part of the plan.

As such, a good RFP should include as a minimum (in some way, shape, or form) the following list of topics:

• The company (the software/product owner) overview page
• VM and DB-related feature set
• Container environments feature set
• Supported recovery technologies
• Administration-related toolset
• Supported operating systems and possible limitations for each version
• Accessibility options
• Storage-related capabilities and supported vendor lists
• Backup security questions
• Licensing models and pricing information

Preparations for the evaluation process

Once the RFP is done and reviewed by the stakeholders, it’s time to distribute it to the potential suppliers from the potential backup software list. Most of the time it is recommended to use a project web page that keeps all of the necessary information about the company with a downloadable version of your RFP. You can also send out emails to the potential vendors that you’re interested in and link them to the previously discussed project page. Relevant deadlines and contact info should also be properly provided.

Evaluation and negotiations

The evaluation process should not just be about hand-picking one of the solutions after manually going through them. To ease the amount of work that is required when choosing, it is recommended to also prepare an evaluation template to make the entire decision process far easier.

The way it works is that there’s an importance score that is designated to each feature, and the RFP reviewers would have to decide if each of the answers to the parts of the RFP is functional, lacking, or nonexistent. Each “functional” means two points, each “lacking” is one point, and every “nonexistent” means zero points for the company. The summarizing of all of the points from the evaluation results would make it easier for the top stakeholders to make the correct choice in regards to the backup and recovery solution.

Of course, this entire process is not quite over after you have chosen – the contract signing is also considered to be a part of the RFP as a process. The Request for Proposal is considered to be completed as soon as the agreement is finalized and the contract is signed.

Best enterprise backup solutions list

It’s understandable that not everyone might choose to proceed with the RFP since it is quite a complicated process. For the ones that are like that, we’ve prepared our extensive list of recommendations picks on the topic of the best enterprise backup software:

Rubrik

Rubrik is one of the best backup and recovery vendors on the market, and their specialization is hybrid IT environments. Rubrik Cloud Data Management (RCDM) is their own invention that makes data protection and cloud integration so much easier. Of course, they also have their own data management platform called Polaris. Polaris consists of Polaris GPS – policy management and reporting, and Polaris Radar with ransomware detection and rehabilitation as its main function.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.7/5 stars based on 45 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 9.1/10 stars based on 198 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.6/5 stars based on 59 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Clean and organized administrative interface
• Multi-cloud and hybrid offerings and integrations with multiple cloud storage providers
• Vast automation capabilities

Shortcomings:

• Cannot backup Azure SQL directly to cloud, requires extra steps to do so
• First-time setup can be long and difficult
• Could use more documentation such as helpful articles and whitepapers

Pricing:

• Rubrik’s pricing information is not publicly available on their official website and the only way to obtain such information is by contacting the company directly for a personalized demo or one of the guided tours.
• The unofficial information states that there are several different hardware appliances that Rubrik can offer, such as:
  • Rubrik R334 Node – from $100,000 for a 3-node with 8-Core Intel processes, 36 TB of storage, etc.
  • Rubrik R344 Node – from $200,000 for a 4-node with similar parameters to R334, 48 TB of storage, etc.
  • Rubrik R500 Series Node – from $115,000 for a 4-node with Intel 8-Core processors, 8×16 DIMM memory, etc.

My personal opinion on Rubrik:

Rubrik is a reasonably versatile enterprise backup solution that includes many features one might expect from a modern backup solution of this scale. It can offer extensive backup and recovery options, a versatile data management platform, a host of data protection measures for different circumstances, extensive policy-based management, and so on. Rubrik’s main specialization is in working with hybrid IT environments, but it can also work with practically any company – if the customer in question is fine with the price Rubrik takes for its services.

Unitrends

When it comes to Hyper-V and VMware backup solutions, Unitrends is always an option for these cases. First of all, it’s free for the first 1 TB of data, and there are multiple editions (free, essentials, standard, enterprise, and enterprise plus) for different needs of customers with different data limits. Other features of Unitrends’ backup solution include instant VM recovery, data compression capabilities, ransomware detection service, protection for virtual and physical files, and, of course, community support.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.7/5 stars based on 34 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 7.9/10 stars based on 613 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.3/5 stars based on 355 customer reviews

Advantages:

• The backup process is easy to initiate once it is set up properly
• Granular control over the entire backup process
• Convenient dashboard with centralized access to a wealth of information

Shortcomings:

• Single file recovery is not easy to initiate in the web interface
• Infrequent false alerts
• No instruction sets in the interface itself – only in web forums

Pricing:

• Unitrends’s pricing information is not publicly available on their official website and the only way to obtain such information is by contacting the company directly for a quote, a free trial, or a guided demo.
• The unofficial information states that Unitrends has a paid version that starts at $349 USD

My personal opinion on Unitrends:

Unitrends puts a lot of emphasis on “solving the issue of complex backup solutions” in its marketing – the software itself is fairly competent. The biggest offering of Unitrends is a backup and recovery platform that can cover virtual environments, physical storage, apps, cloud storage, and even endpoints. The ability to offer a centralized approach to managing a multitude of data sources at once greatly boosts the overall convenience of using such a solution, and most of its processes are highly customizable. It has its own issues, including a confusing pricing model and a problematic granular restore process, but none of its issues deter from the overall effectiveness of the software as a whole.

Veeam Backup & Replication

If we’re talking about virtual environments, then Veeam might be our first pick, with their cutting-edge technologies that allow flexible and fast data recovery when you need it. Their all-in-one solution is capable of both protecting your VMware vSphere/Hyper-V virtual environments and doing basic backup and recovery jobs, as well. The scalability of the solution is quite impressive, too, as well as their number of specific features, like deduplication, instant file-level recovery, and so on. Veeam’s distribution model is not exactly complex, either: there are several versions with different capabilities and variable pricing.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.8/5 stars based on 69 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 8.8/10 stars based on 1,237 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.6/5 stars based on 387 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Initial setup is simple and easy
• Most of Veeam’s solutions are available for free for smaller companies with some limitations
• Outstanding customer support

Shortcomings:

• UI could use some work in terms of user-friendliness
• The pricing of the solution is higher than average
• Learning the entirety of Veeam’s capabilities takes a lot of time and resources
• Security levels can be questionable

Pricing:

• Veeam’s pricing information is not publicly available on their official website and the only way to obtain such information is by contacting the company directly for a quote or a free trial. What it does have is a pricing calculator page that lets users specify the number of different environments they want covered with Veeam’s solution, as well as the planned subscription period. All of that can be sent to Veeam in order to receive a personalized quote.

My personal opinion on Veeam:

Veeam may be the most popular backup solution on this list – it is one of the most popular ones, at the very least. It may be focusing quite a lot on its VM-related backup capabilities, but the solution itself is also suitable for working to some extent with other environments – physical, cloud, applications, and more. It is a fast and scalable solution that has plenty to offer to practically every possible client type – from small startups and companies to massive enterprises. At the same time, it can be quite tricky to learn all of its capabilities, security levels may be questionable, and the pricing of the solution is well above the market average.

Bacula Enterprise

Bacula Enterprise is a highly reliable backup and recovery software that presents various functions like data backup, recovery, data protection, disaster recovery capabilities and more. It offers especially high security and is mainly targeted at medium enterprises and larger Bacula provides an unusually large range of different features, from various storage types and easy setup to low deployment costs and extra-fast data recovery times. It can work with practically any (well over 34) Linux distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, etc.), and a lot of other operating systems, too, like Microsoft, MacOS X, Solaris, and more. Bacula also has a unique modular architecture that gives even further significant protection against ransomware and other attacks. It offers a choice (or combination) of both command line and Web-based GUI’s. Its very strong range of security features and many additional high performance, enterprise-grade technologies such as advanced deduplication, compression and additional backup levels make it a favorite among HPC and mission-critical, demanding enterprises. The licensing model also avoids charging per data volume, which makes it especially attractive to MSPs, ISVs, Telcos, Military and Research establishments, large data centers and governmental organizations.

Customer ratings:

• TrustRadius – 9.6/10 stars based on 53 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.7/5 stars based on 55 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Especially high security levels and deployment flexibility
• Job scheduling is incredibly useful for many reasons
• Creates an effective backup and disaster recovery framework
• Support for many different data environments, such as servers, databases, VMs, Cloud interfaces, in-cloud apps, etc.
• Users only pay for the technology they use, creating even more savings

Shortcomings:

• Web interface’s broad functionality requires time to get used to it
• Initial setup process takes a decent amount of time
• Additional price for plugins that are not in the basic solution package

Pricing:

• Bacula Enterprise’s pricing information is not publicly available on their official website and the only way to obtain such information is by contacting the company directly for a quote.
• There are plenty of different subscription plans that Bacula Enterprise can offer, even though there is no pricing available to any of them:
  • BSBE – Bacula Small Business Edition, it can cover no more than 20 agents and 2 contracts, offering features such as web support and BWeb management suite
  • Standard – can cover up to 50 agents and 2 contracts, adds support answer deadlines (from 1 to 4 business days)
  • Bronze – can cover up to 200 agents and 2 contracts, offers phone support and shorter deadlines for customer support (from 6 hours to 4 days)
  • Silver – can cover up to 500 agents and 3 contracts, introduces a deduplication plugin and a lower customer support answer deadline (from 4 hours to 2 days)
  • Gold – can cover up to 2000 agents and 5 contracts, drastically reduces customer support answer deadline (from 1 hour to 2 days)
  • Platinum – can cover up to 5000 agents and 5 contracts, has PostgreSQL catalog support and one training seat per year for Administrator courses
• Unofficial sources claim that Bacula Enterprise’s pricing starts at $500 per month

My personal opinion on Bacula Enterprise:

There may be a bit of a bias involved in this case, but I believe that Bacula Enterprise is currently one of the best possible options on the backup and recovery market for large companies and enterprises. It is a versatile backup solution with a proverbial ocean of features and capabilities. At the same time, plenty of features that are not a part of Bacula’s original package can be added to it via a system of modules that extend the functionality in some way. Bacula can offer a modular architecture, a variety of supported operating systems, and impressive flexibility when it comes to supporting specific storage types or data formats. Above all, Bacula’s superior levels of security and its ability to mold those security layers into an organization’s (often very) specific needs cannot be overstated in today’s world of aggressive ransomware and other security attacks.  It can take time to learn initially, and users need to have at least a little Linux knowledge, but the wealth of features that is available to an average Bacula user is more than worth the effort it takes to learn it.

Acronis Cyber Backup

Acronis is a well-known competitor in the software market, and its Cyber Backup solution keeps up with the company’s standards, offering a secure and effective backup solution for multiple use cases. Acronis can help you with protecting your information from a wide variety of threats, including software failures, hardware problems, cyber-attacks, accidents, and so on. There are also more features within the same field, such as in-depth monitoring and reporting, minimized user downtime, the ability to ensure if a backup is authentic or not, and so on.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.5/5 stars based on 204 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 7.8/10 stars based on 133 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.3/5 stars based on 668 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Compatibility with large variety of workloads
• AI-based malware protection
• Easy data collection operations

Shortcomings:

• The solution’s pricing is significantly above the market average
• The backup agent is incredibly demanding in terms of system hardware
• User interface can be confusing and is often considered outdated

Pricing:

• Acronis Cyber Protect’s Backup capabilities differ in pricing depending on the nature of the backup target:
  • From $109 per one workstation, be it physical or virtual, macOS or Windows
  • From $779 for one server, be it physical or virtual, Linux or Windows
  • From $1,019 per one virtual host, be it Hyper-V or VMware (no limitations on the number of virtual machines per host)
  • From $139 for either Microsoft 365 data (across SharePoint Online, Teams, OneDrive for Business or Exchange Online) or Google Workspace data (across Contacts, Calendar, Drive, or Gmail)
• Acronis Cyber Protect – Backup Advanced can offer file-level backups, image-based backups, incremental/differential backups, ransomware protection, vulnerability assessment, group management, AD integration, reports, and more.

My personal opinion on Acronis:

Acronis as a company offers backup and recovery software for different use cases, mostly targeting large-scale enterprises. Data security is always its biggest focus, Acronis claims to be able to protect its users against cyber-attacks, hardware failures, software issues, and even the ever-present “human factor” in the form of accidental data deletion. It includes AI-based malware protection, extensive backup encryption, and backup-related features that are really good. However, scalability can be limited, integration with some databases, VM’s and containers is limited, and its interface can be a touch confusing at times, and the solution itself is often described as “very expensive”. Still, plenty of small and medium companies would gladly pay Acronis to safeguard their data.

Cohesity

Cohesity is more of a “all-in-one” solution, capable of working with both regular applications as well as VMs, and its scalability is quite impressive, as well, thanks to their own cluster-like structure with nodes. It can keep backups with app-native formats and use NAS protocols to manipulate a variety of data types. Their data restoration speed is good, as well. Unfortunately, the pricing model isn’t that flexible and some specific objectives, like MS Exchange or SharePoint granular recovery, are only covered by separate modules that you’ll have to pay for first.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.6/5 stars based on 48 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 8.9/10 stars based on 59 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.4/5 stars based on 45 customer reviews

Advantages:

• User-friendly interface
• Simple and fast implementation
• Convenience of seeing all clusters in a single screen

Shortcomings:

• Cannot perform backups on a specific date of the calendar
• Database backup process is inconvenient and needlessly convoluted
• Automation capabilities are very basic

Pricing:

• Cohesity’s pricing information is not publicly available on their official website and the only way to obtain such information is by contacting the company directly for a free trial or a guided demo.
• The unofficial information about Cohesity’s pricing states that its hardware appliances alone have a starting price of $110,000 USD

My personal opinion on Cohesity:

Cohesity is a good example of a middle-ground enterprise backup solution in terms of its feature set. It has everything you may expect from a backup solution of this level – support for a variety of data types and storage environments, impressive backup/restoration speed, an impressive list of backup-centric features, and more. What’s interesting about Cohesity specifically is its infrastructure – the entire solution is built using a node-like structure that allows for an impressive scalability that is both fast and relatively simple to use. Cohesity’s interface is rather user-friendly in comparison with other software on the market, but there is also the fact that database backup with Cohesity is not particularly simple or easy, and there are little to no automation capabilities available, as well. Container backup needs much mire work, and Reporting is also limited.

MSP360 (formerly Cloudberry Lab)

MSP360 is a well-known cross-platform backup and recovery solution, offering integrations with most of the big public cloud storage providers, such as AWS, Azure, Google, etc. MSP360’s backup-related capabilities are vast and varied, including both image-based and file-level backups, disaster recovery in the cloud, high-class encryption and data compression. It also works with Mac, Windows and Linux operating systems, providing an unprecedented level of protection and disaster recovery capabilities.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.7/5 stars based on 204 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 8.1/10 stars based on 45 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.5/5 stars based on 403 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Easy initial setup and configuration
• Centralized control over a lot of different information and features from a single page
• Both backup and restore processes are quick and easy

Shortcomings:

• The inconvenience of having to pay an additional price for specific features such as SQL backups
• Higher than average price that may be unsuitable for small businesses
• Customer service receives a lot of polarizing reviews

Pricing:

• MSP360’s pricing information is not publicly available on their official website and the only way to obtain such information is by contacting the company directly for a quote. Their special “quote calculator” page allows potential customers to specify what specifically they want to be backed up, be it Windows, Mac, Linux devices, VMware, Hyper-V, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, etc.

My personal opinion on MSP360:

MSP360 is a product that was originally Cloudberry Labs – a relatively simple backup and recovery solution. Now it has an entire suite of features for all kinds of situations and use cases, be it cloud backups, physical backups, and so on. MSP360 supports a number of different operating systems, can offer both granular and large-scale backup features, and has enough centralization capabilities to offer complete control over the company’s backup and recovery processes. There are not that many positive reviews about MSP360’s customer service as a whole, and the pricing model of the solution also includes quite a lot of different features that are not included in the base package (meaning that users looking for SQL backups, for example, would have to pay extra).

IBM Spectrum Storage Suite

IBM’s prime goal is to make data protection as simple as it gets, no matter the storage type or data type. There’s also a lot more of the different features, like basic backup and recovery jobs, disaster recovery, bare metal recovery, and so on. The solution itself is based on the agentless virtual environment and it can work well with both VMware and Hyper-V environments. The licensing model is charged per TB spent, no matter the data type, which makes it cheaper for some specific cases with large data processing amounts.

Customer ratings:

• TrustRadius – 8.0/10 stars based on 22 customer reviews
• G2 – 3.9/5 stars based on 60 customer reviews

Advantages:

• The convenience of having a single backup solution for a complex environment with multiple storage types
• A wealth of backup-related options such as granular recovery and integration with third-party tools
• Documentation and logging capabilities are highly regarded

Shortcomings:

• Setting up and configuring the solution properly requires time and resources
• Solution’s GUI is confusing and takes time getting used to
• The complexity of the architecture is significantly higher than average

Pricing:

• IBM Spectrum Protect’s pricing information only includes two pricing plans:
  • A monthly license that starts at $67.70 for either 1 Terabyte or 10 managed VMs
  • A perpetual license that starts at $2,160 per either 1 Terabyte or 10 managed VMs

My personal opinion on IBM Spectrum:

IBM Spectrum is a somewhat unknown backup solution from a well-known technological company. This is the same company that is mostly known for its hardware rather than software. However, IBM Spectrum is still a good backup and recovery solution for large companies – it is simple, feature-rich, agentless, and supports plenty of different storage types. It also excels in the area that is often perceived as the weakest part of enterprise backup solutions – reporting/logging capabilities. The solution in question can be a bit tough in terms of first-time configuration, and the overall interface of the solution can be rather confusing, and the individual elements of the solution can create real difficulty. But the solution is rather impressive as a whole.

Dell Data Protection Suite

Dell Data Protection Suite is a comprehensive data protection solution that should work for the majority of the companies of any size. Data protection levels are variable, user-friendly UI allows for easy data protection visualisation, and built-in continuous data protection technology (CDP) allows for fast recovery times for VM environments. There’s also a number of different applications in the package, as well, like the separate backup in the cloud, the support for more storage types, data isolation/data recovery/data analytics automatization, and so on.

Customer ratings:

• TrustRadius – 7.9/10 stars based on 5 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.1/5 stars based on 20 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Support for plenty of different OS types
• Great for large databases and enterprises
• Interface user-friendliness

Shortcomings:

• Backups could fail if some elements in the system are different from before
• Error reports are somewhat confusing
• A lot of complains about the customer support

Pricing:

• Dell Data Protection Suite’s pricing information is not publicly available on their official website and the only way to obtain such information is by contacting the company directly for a quote or a demo.
• The unofficial information suggests that Dell’s pricing starts at $99 per year per single workspace

My personal opinion on Dell Data Protection Suite:

Another good example of enterprise backup software from a company that is mostly known for its hardware appliances is Dell. Dell Data Protection Suite is not the first iteration of a backup solution from this company, but it is a decent enterprise backup tool. It can offer a user-friendly interface, plenty of centralization capabilities, a variety of features and functions in the realm of backup operations, and more. It supports plenty of different operating systems and storage types, making it a great fit for large-scale businesses and enterprises. At the same time, the solution has its share of problems, from inconsistent customer support reviews to confusing backup error messages and limitations with certain technologies and reporting capabilities.

Vembu BDR Suite

Data protection complexity is one of the prime points of Vembu’s solution, and they claim to be able to work with companies of any size. Their feature list is quite extensive, as well, having VMware backup, Windows Image backup, app backup, data replication, and so on. Their configuration time is shorter than many of its competitors, and the overall system responsiveness is praised by many users. However, it can get somewhat too complicated at times, and some users find that pretty annoying.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.5/5 stars based on 17 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 8.4/10 stars based on 88 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.2/5 stars based on 130 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Helpful and fast customer support
• Web-based user interface is fairly convenient and user-friendly
• A full-fledged Linux version of the solution

Shortcomings:

• A significant price increase across the board at the end of the previous year
• Steep learning curve
• Most of the customer support’s knowledge is based on Windows version, which may lead to confusion when it comes to Linux versions

Pricing:

• Vembu BDR Suite’s pricing varies quite a lot depending on the target data source:
  • VM Backup – from $18 per year per VM, with support for both Hyper-V and VMware deployments
  • Server Backup – from $60 per year per server, both Linux and Windows servers are supported
  • Application/DB Backup – from $60 per year per application/database, can work with SQL, MySQL, and Exchange
  • SaaS Backup – from $12 per year per user, works for Google Workspace and Microsoft 365
  • Cloud VM Backup – from $30 per year per AWS instance
  • Endpoint Backup – from $15 per year per endpoint, supports Windows and Mac devices
• It is also worth noting that most of the BDR Suite’s backup solutions are also available for free with most of the features and a strict limitation on the number of workstations/VMs/servers it can work with.
• A lot more details about Vembu BDR Suite’s pricing can be obtained at the official pricing page.

My personal opinion on Vembu:

Unlike most of the solutions on this list, Vembu focuses all of its software development efforts on just two solutions – BDR Suite and BDR Cloud. Both of these solutions can also be considered one and the same, to a certain degree, since BDR Cloud is just a feature-limited version of BDR Suite that works from the cloud instead of physical deployment. BDR Suite, on the other hand, is an incredible enterprise data backup solution with a truly massive feature set. It supports plenty of storage types and environment variations, while also being a relatively fast solution in terms of recovery times and response speed. However, it is also a rather complex software – one of the most complex data backup solutions for enterprise on this list. As such, any potential user should keep the overall complexity of this software in mind as a possible disadvantage for themselves.

Veritas Backup Exec

If you’re looking for a company that has a long history – Veritas may be the one for you, with its several decades of company success. Its backup and recovery capabilities are quite extensive, with information governance, cloud data management, and other brand-new functions. You can choose from either the deployable version of their solution or the integratable appliance. Veritas is highly favored by older legacy companies that prefer services that have proven themselves with time. However, users report that there are some problems with hardware scaling capacity, as well as other little ’niggles’ here and there.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.0/5 stars based on 7 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 6.8/10 stars based on 150 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.1/5 stars based on 230 customer reviews

Advantages:

• The sheer number of features available to customers
• Praise-worthy GUI
• Excellent customer support

Shortcomings:

• Working with LTO tape libraries is problematic
• Cannot export reports to a PDF file without Adobe Reader installed on that same system
• Automated reports cannot be saved to a different location on a different server

Pricing:

• Veritas’s pricing information is not publicly available on their official website and the only way to obtain such information is by contacting the company directly.

My personal opinion on Veritas:

Veritas can be considered an average enterprise backup solution, to a certain degree – it offers most of the features that one would expect in a similar solution, be it support for plenty of different environments or a variety of features for data security, data backups, etc. The discerning feature of Veritas is its legacy, to a certain degree. Veritas as a backup software provider is a very old company, even by this market’s standards – and it managed to accumulate a lot of positive reviews over the years. This kind of experience and reputation is what a lot of older and more conservative businesses are looking for – which is why Veritas still has plenty of clients and gets newer ones on a regular basis. Veritas also has a number of very specific shortcomings, such as the lack of proper LTO tape support as backup storage, which can be a massive detriment for specific users.

NAKIVO

Nakivo Backup & Replication is another competitor on the list that is developed by a much larger company in general. Their backup solution is reliable, fast and can work with both cloud and physical environments, offering enterprise-grade data protection and a whole package of other features. Some of these features are: file recovery on-demand, incremental backup for different platforms, low backup size, impressive overall performance – and all of that is packed in a nice and easy-to-use UI.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.8/5 stars based on 305 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 9.2/10 stars based on 142 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.7/5 stars based on 203 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Easy to install and configure
• Simple and clean user interface
• Noteworthy customer support

Shortcomings:

• Error logging is limited and cannot always help with determining the cause of the error
• Limited support for physical servers running on Linux
• Higher than average price tag

Pricing:

• NAKIVO’s pricing can be split into two main groups:
• Subscription-based licenses:
  • “Pro Essentials” – from $1.95 per month per workload, covers most common backup types such as physical, virtual, cloud and NAS, while also offering instant granular recovery, virtual and cloud replication, storage immutability, and more
  • “Enterprise Essentials” – from $2.60 per month per workload, adds native backup to tape, deduplication appliance integration, backup to cloud, as well as 2FA, AD integration, calendar, data protection based on policies, etc.
  • “Enterprise Plus” does not have public pricing available, it adds HTTP API integration, RBAC, Oracle backup, backup from snapshots, and other features
  • There is also a subscription available for Microsoft 365 coverage that costs $0.80 per month per user with an annual billing and can create backups of MS Teams, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, OneDrive for Business, and more
  • Another subscription from NAKIVO is its VMware monitoring capabilitiy that comes in three different forms:
    • “Pro Essentials” for $0.90 per month per workload with CPU, RAM, disk usage monitoring and a built-in live chat
    • “Enterprise Essentials” for $1.15 per month per workload that adds AD integration, 2FA capability, multi-tenant deployment, and more
    • “Enterprise Plus” with no public pricing that adds RBAC and HTTP API integrations
• Perpetual licenses:
  • Virtual environments:
    • “Pro Essentials” for $229 per socket, covers Hyper-V, VMware, Nutanix AHV, and features such as instant granular recovery, immutable storage, cross-platform recovery, etc.
    • “Enterprise Essentials” for $329 per socket, adds native backup to tape, backup to cloud, deduplication, 2FA, AD integration, and more
    • “Enterprise Plus” with no public pricing that adds RBAC and HTTP API integrations, as well as backup from storage snapshots
  • Servers:
    • “Pro Essentials” for $58 per server, covers Windows and Linux, and features such as immutable storage, instant P2V, instant granular recovery, etc.
    • “Enterprise Essentials” for $329 per server, adds native backup to tape, backup to cloud, deduplication, 2FA, AD integration, and more
    • “Enterprise Plus” with no public pricing that adds RBAC and HTTP API integrations
  • Workstations:
    • “Pro Essentials” for $19 per workstation, covers Windows and Linux, and features such as immutable storage, instant P2V, instant granular recovery, etc.
    • “Enterprise Essentials” for $25 per workstation, adds native backup to tape, backup to cloud, deduplication, 2FA, AD integration, and more
    • “Enterprise Plus” with no public pricing that adds RBAC and HTTP API integrations
  • NAS:
    • “Pro Essentials” for $149 per one Terabyte of data, can backup NFS shares, SMB shares, folders on shares, and offer file level recovery
    • “Enterprise Essentials” for $199 per one Terabyte of data, adds AD integration, 2FA support, calendar, multi-tenant deployment, etc.
    • “Enterprise Plus” with no public pricing that adds RBAC and HTTP API integrations
  • Oracle DB:
    • “Enterprise Plus” is the only option available for Oracle database backups via RMAN, it can offer advanced scheduling, centralized management, and more
  • VMware monitoring:
    • “Pro Essentials” for $100 per socket with CPU, RAM, disk usage monitoring and a built-in live chat
    • “Enterprise Essentials” for $150 per socket that adds AD integration, 2FA capability, multi-tenant deployment, and more
    • “Enterprise Plus” with no public pricing that adds RBAC and HTTP API integrations

My personal opinion on NAKIVO:

NAKIVO may not have decades of experience behind its shoulders, and it is definitely not the most feature-rich solution on this market. However, none of these factors make NAKIVO a bad enterprise data backup software. Quite the contrary, it is a versatile enterprise backup and recovery system that is fast, responsive, and relatively easy to work with. NAKIVO offers on-demand file recovery, impressive backup performance, easy first-time configuration, and an impressive customer support team. However, it is worth noting that NAKIVO’s services are rather expensive, and it also has the bane of most backup solutions – the lackluster reporting/logging capability. Storage destination are also limited.

NetApp SnapCenter

NetApp’s power is their availability – with over 150 offices all over the world it is capable of providing a lot of local support. There are a range of different backup and recovery-related functions, with the ability to have access to your data via your laptop or even the mobile phone. There’s a centralized interface for your monitoring, scheduling and logging efforts, and there’s a variety of different data types supported, from apps and databases to MS Exchange servers, VMs, and so on. Their response times are good, and according to user reviews, the centralization is quite handy. But there are also problems with customer experience here and there, as well as documentation thoroughness concerns.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.5/5 stars based on 8 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 9.2/10 stars based on 2 customer reviews
• G2 – 3.8/5 stars based on 2 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Significant part of the cloning process is automated
• User-friendly solution with few complex settings or menus
• Remote backup capabilities are praise-worthy

Shortcomings:

• A decent number of bugs throughout the solution
• Limited customer support
• Restoring Linux servers remotely is not allowed

Pricing:

• NetApp’s pricing information is not publicly available on their official website and the only way to obtain such information is by contacting the company directly for a free trial or a “test drive”.
• The unofficial information suggests that NetApp SnapCenter’s average subscription fee starts at $1,410 per year

My personal opinion on NetApp:

NetApp SnapCenter is a relatively unknown part in this list of enterprise data backup solutions – even though it is quite competent in its own regard. NetApp can offer backup centralization, a variety of scheduling options, plenty of backup-related features, and support for a number of different storage types. Backups created with the solution can also be accessed by practically any device that has a web browser, including laptops and mobile phones. NetApp is also one of the few solutions that has offices all over the world, providing a lot of local support for companies in specific countries – something that most competitors don’t do at all. It is worth noting that the solution itself has plenty of bugs, and its Linux capabilities are rather limited in comparison with Windows feature set.

Commvault

Commvault is all about applying cutting-edge technologies of their data backup and recovery solution to provide the best experience possible with various file types, data sources, backup types and storage locations. Commvault is known for its pinpoint accuracy backups for VMs, databases or endpoints, VM recovery, unstructured data backup, data transfer, etc. Commvault can integrate with more than a dozen cloud storage providers, including VMware, AWS, Azure, and many more. On the other hand, there are some areas that need to be worked on, according to some customer reviews, like UI friendliness.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.8/5 stars based on 9 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 7.8/10 stars based on 207 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.2/5 stars based on 78 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Easy connection with complex IT infrastructures
• A significant number of integrations to choose from
• Backup configuration is simple

Shortcomings:

• Not the most beginner-friendly solution on the market
• Takes a rather significant amount of time to set up and configure
• Basic logging functions are lacking

Pricing:

• Commvault’s pricing information is not publicly available on their official website and the only way to obtain such information is by contacting the company directly for a demo showcase or a free 30-day trial.
• The unofficial information suggests that Commvault’s hardware appliances’ price ranges from $3,400 to $8,781 per month.

My personal opinion on Commvault:

Commvault is a relatively standard enterprise-grade backup solution that uses a variety of cutting-edge technologies to provide the best possible user experience to its customers. Commvault works with containers, cloud storage, VMs, databases, endpoints, and more. It delivers a fast and accurate backup and recovery experience, it can be integrated with a variety of cloud storage providers, and it is relatively easy to set up backup tasks with it. However, Commvault can be really expensive. At the same time, Commvault suffers from the lack of logging/reporting data for most of its features, and its first-time setup is notoriously long and complicated.

Asigra

Asigra has been on the market for a while now, earning its reputation over more than thirty years of experience in the field. Now Asigra provides a data recovery solution to its clients from anywhere in the world, taking advantage of a wide partner network with cloud backup and recovery services for different deployment types. Asigra is an agentless enterprise-class recovery software that supports not only servers and databases, but also VMs, endpoint devices, applications, and more. It can also eliminate backup data silos, reduce RTOs and claim a guaranteed recovery assurance in any case.

Customer ratings:

• TrustRadius – 6.7/10 stars based on 38 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.2/5 stars based on 82 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Extremely convenient agentless backups for different storage types
• Restore validation is quick and easy, figuring out the state of any backup in a very short time frame
• Restore process automation is incredibly convenient

Shortcomings:

• Feature implementation speed is slower than most competitors
• Different storage types may not be compatible with each other, such as the S3 storage and the extensible storage
• A limited number of support calls per year

Pricing:

• Asigra’s pricing information is not publicly available on their official website and the only way to obtain such information is by contacting the company directly for a demo showcase.

My personal opinion on Asigra:

Asigra has been around for about three decades now, going through several rebrandings, while still managing to provide a respectable level of services in terms of backup and recovery capabilities. To this day Asigra remains a noteworthy backup solution with an agentless structure that supports endpoints, VMs, applications, and regular data storage. It has contracts with a variety of cloud storage providers and plenty of integrations with other services to ensure the safety and accessibility of all client data. Asigra claims to be able to eliminate data backup silos, but its feature implementation speed is slower than with most competitors, and there is also a limit on how many support calls a regular user can get in a year, which is a very unusual approach to customer support.

Carbonite Endpoint

As the name suggests, Carbonite Endpoint is all about protecting the endpoint data – information that resides in users’ smartphones, tablets, computers and laptops. Carbonite uses multiple different technologies such as global deduplication and file-level backup to improve data recovery speed and manage bandwidth of the backup and recovery processes. It can also interact with servers and external hard drives, offering a great deal in terms of security for your data without overpaying for it. The solution itself is fairly easy to use and offers a great deal in terms of price for the feature set.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.3/5 stars based on 165 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 7.3/10 stars based on 61 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Backups are checked regularly for ransomware and other malware types
• Initial setup is quick and easy
• Overall user experience with the solution is praise-worthy

Shortcomings:

• Slow administrative interface
• Difficult to specify which files and folders to back up
• Some of the files are ignored by the solution (for example if the symbol ~ is in the name)

Pricing:

• Carbonite’s pricing information is not publicly available on their official website and the only way to obtain such information is by contacting the company directly for a consultation.

My personal opinion on Carbonite Endpoint:

Carbonite Endpoint is a solution that differs quite a lot from most of the examples on this list. Carbonite’s feature set is rather limited, it focuses all of its efforts on one single goal – protecting endpoints. It’s not uncommon for modern companies and enterprises to have hundreds or even thousands of devices connected to the same internal system, and protecting each device in this scenario can be a significant challenge. Carbonite was created to solve this exact issue, offering complete protection of every single endpoint in a system with encryption, granular backups, data deduplication, and more. It is relatively cheap and easy to work with, but it is not a complete backup and recovery by design, so it would need at least one more backup software to achieve full data protection on a company level.

Druva

It is fairly common for any company now to have their data spread across hundreds of different devices due to workforce mobility and the quick rise of various cloud services. Unfortunately, this change also makes it rather difficult to make sure that each and every device with the company’s data is properly protected. Services like Druva Cloud Platform come in handy in these situations, offering a wealth of data management options across different devices and applications. The platform itself works as-a-service and offers easier backup and recovery operations, better data visibility, less complex device management, as well as a range of regulatory and compliance operations.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.7/5 stars based on 17 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 9.3/10 stars based on 419 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.6/5 stars based on 416 customer reviews

Advantages:

• GUI as a whole receives a lot of praise
• Backup immutability and data encryption are just an example of how serious Druva is when it comes to data security
• Customer support is quick and useful

Shortcomings:

• First-time setup is not easy to perform by yourself
• Windows snapshots and SQL cluster backups are simplistic and barely customizable
• Slow restore speed from cloud

Pricing:

• Druva’s pricing is fairly sophisticated and offers different pricing plans depending on the type of device or application that is covered.
• Hybrid workloads:
  • “Hybrid business” – $210 per month per Terabyte of data after deduplication, offering an easy business backup with plenty of features such as global deduplication, VM file level recovery, NAS storage support, etc.
  • “Hybrid enterprise” – $240 per month per Terabyte of data after deduplication, an extension of the previous offering with LTR (long term retention) features, storage insights/recommendations, cloud cache, etc.
  • “Hybrid elite” – $300 per month per Terabyte of data after deduplication, adds cloud disaster recovery to the previous package, creating the ultimate solution for data management and disaster recovery
  • There are also features that Druva sells separately, such as accelerated ransomware recovery, cloud disaster recovery (available to Hybrid elite users), security posture & observability, and deployment for U.S. government cloud
• SaaS applications:
  • “Business” – $2.5 per month per user, the most basic package of SaaS app coverage (Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, the price is calculated per single app), can offer 5 storage regions, 10 GB of storage per user, as well as basic data protection
  • “Enterprise” – $4 per month per user for either/or Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace coverage with features such as groups, public folders, as well as Salesforce.com coverage for $3.5 per month per user (includes metadata restore, automated backups, compare tools, etc.)
  • “Elite” – $7 per month per user for Microsoft 365/Google Workspace, $5.25 for Salesforce, includes GDPR compliance check, eDiscovery enablement, federated search, GCC High support, and many other features
  • Some features here can also be purchased separately, such as Sandbox seeding (Salesforce), Sensitive data governance (Google Workspace & Microsoft 365), GovCloud support (Microsoft 365), etc.
• Endpoints:
  • “Enterprise” – $8 per month per user, can offer SSO support, CloudCache, DLP support, data protection per data source, and 50 Gb of storage per user with delegated administration
  • “Elite” – $10 per month per user, adds features such as federated search, additional data collection, defensible deletion, advanced deployment capabilities, and more
  • There are also plenty of features that could be purchased separately here, including advanced deployment capabilities (available in the Elite subscription tier), ransomware recovery/response, sensitive data governance, and GovCloud support.
• AWS workloads:
  • “Freemium” is a free offering from Druva for AWS workload coverage, it can cover up to 20 AWS resources at once (no more than 2 accounts), while offering features such as VPC cloning, cross-region and cross-account DR, file-level recovery, AWS Organizations integration, API access, etc.
  • “Enterprise” – $7 per month per resource, starting from 20 resources, has an upper limit of 25 accounts and extends upon the previous version’s capabilities with features such as data lock, file-level search, the ability to import existing backups, the ability to prevent manual deletion, 24/7 support with 4 hours of response time at most, etc.
  • “Elite” – $9 per month per resource, has no limitations on managed resources or accounts, adds auto-protection by VPC, AWS account, as well as GovCloud support and less than 1 hour of support response time guaranteed by SLA.
  • Users of Enterprise and Elite pricing plans can also purchase Druva’s capability to save air-gapped EC2 backups to Druva Cloud for an additional price.
• It is easy to see how one can get confused with Druva’s pricing scheme as a whole. Luckily, Druva themselves have a dedicated webpage with the sole purpose of creating a personalized estimate of a company’s TCO with Druva in just a few minutes (a pricing calculator).

My personal opinion on Druva:

Druva’s cloud backup platform was built with the purpose of solving a rather popular problem of managing hundreds of different devices within the same system – which is why it is rather obvious that Druva’s solution mainly targets large businesses and enterprises. The solution itself is provided on a SaaS basis, capable of protecting all kinds of devices, including endpoints, databases, VMs, physical storage, and so on. Druva’s solution offers a wealth of backup and recovery features, impressive data protection capabilities, and compliance with a number of legal and regulatory matters. Druva’s pricing model is rather confusing, and the first-time setup is not an easy process, and it is unlikely to work well for an organization with a lot of data volume. Integration with some VM’s and databases is also very limited.

Zerto

Zerto is a good choice if you’re looking for a multifunctional backup management platform with a variety of features. It offers everything you’d want from a modern backup and restore solution – CDP (continuous data protection), minimal vendor lock-in, and more. It can be used with plenty of different storage types, ensuring complete data coverage from the start.

Zerto also offers data protection as one of the core strategies from day one, offering applications the ability to be generated with protection from the start. Zerto also has many automation capabilities, is capable of providing extensive insights, and can work with different cloud storages at once.

Customer ratings:

• Capterra – 4.8/5 stars based on 25 customer reviews
• TrustRadius – 8.6/10 stars based on 113 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.6/5 stars based on 73 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Management simplicity for disaster recovery tasks
• Ease of integration with existing infrastructures, both on-premise and in the cloud
• Workload migration capabilities and plenty of other features

Shortcomings:

• Can only be deployed on Windows operating systems
• Reporting features are somewhat rigid
• Can be rather expensive for large enterprises and businesses

Pricing:

• The official Zerto website offers three different licensing categories – Zerto for VMs and Zerto for SaaS
• Zerto for VMs includes:
  • “Enterprise Cloud Edition” as a multi-cloud mobility, disaster recovery, and ransomware resilience solution
  • “Migration License” as a dedicated license for data center refreshes, infrastructure modernization, and cloud migration
• Zerto for SaaS, on the other hand, is a single solution that can cover M365, Salesforce, Google Workspace, Zendesk, and more
• There is no official pricing information available for Zerto’s solution, it can only be acquired via a personalized quote or purchased through one of Zerto’s sales partners

My personal opinion on Zerto:

Zerto is a rather interesting option for large backup and recovery workloads – as a dedicated backup management platform, it was purpose-built to handle such tasks in the first place. Zerto’s main solution offers ransomware resilience, data mobility, and disaster recovery in a single package, while also being capable of working with a variety of different storage options. It is a Windows-exclusive solution, and the price tag tends to scale up quite fast for large companies, but the ability to perform workload migrations and integrate with different systems is usually worth far more than any price tag for large companies. Security and scalability may however, be a significant concern for larger organizations.

Barracuda

Barracuda is a fairly unusual company that offers configurable multifunctional backup appliances as their way to provide backup and recovery features. Barracuda Backup can create backups of applications, emails, and regular data. It offers extensive deduplication, data encryption, centralized data management, and plenty of other features in the backup and recovery department.

Customer ratings:

• TrustRadius – 8.0/10 stars based on 99 customer reviews
• G2 – 4.4/5 stars based on 49 customer reviews

Advantages:

• Barracuda’s user interface is relatively simple and easy to navigate, and creating backup jobs is a rather intuitive process
• Separate schedules could be set up for every single source that is backed up by Barracuda Backup’s appliance
• Data retention is also completely customizable and can be customized for every backup source separately

Shortcomings:

• Barracuda’s pricing policy is not what you would call egregious, but it is high enough for plenty of smaller businesses to not use it purely because they cannot afford it in the long run
• The solution’s reporting capabilities are rather basic and filtering through multiple reports can be a bit of a problem
• Every first-time loading of the solution takes quite a lot of time, no matter how fast the connection or the hardware in question actually is.
• Lacks Kubernetes support
• Disaster Recovery has some strict limitations

Pricing (at time of writing):

• There is no specific public pricing available for Barracuda Backup, the only way to learn this particular information is to request a personalized quote.
• The way Barracuda collects data for such a quote is rather interesting – there is an entire configuration tool available that allows potential customers to choose from a number of options in order for Barracuda to gain a better understanding of the client’s needs.
• There are five different steps that this tool has before dropping the user to the last page with the request to “contact Barracuda to proceed”, including:
  • Physical Locations – offers the ability to show how many different locations the client wants to cover, as well as the amount of raw data necessary (the basic setting is 1 location and 3TB of data)
  • Deployment – the ability to choose between deployment options, there are three options to choose from: physical appliance, virtual appliance, and managed service
  • Offsite Replication – an optional feature to replicate your data somewhere as an offsite storage, there is a choice between Barracuda’s own cloud, AWS, network transfer to another physical location, or no replication at all (this particular option is not recommended)
  • Office 365 Backup – a short and simple choice between choosing to create backups of existing Office 365 data or to decline the option if you do not wish this data to be backed up or there is no data at all
  • Support Options – a choice between three possible options, including the basic update package and the 8-to-5 customer support, an option with instant equipment replacement in case of a hardware failure and the 24/7 customer support, and a separate option for a dedicated team of engineers to be assigned to your specific company’s case

My personal opinion on Barracuda Backup:

Barracuda Backup is an interesting take on a hardware-based backup solution, using hardware appliances in order to provide data backups, email backups, application backups, and more. Its interface is easy to work with, and the solution also offers quite a lot of customization at different levels of the backup process. There’s also the fact that Barracuda Backup has a rather basic reporting feature set. As the solution relies a lot on hardware instead of just software, it makes the solution price that much higher, which could be too much for smaller or middle-sized businesses – but that factor is not as important for large-scale enterprises that can afford bigger pricing if it means complete data protection for their information. Overall though, there have been significant questions about its tech support, scheduling manager and user interface.

Arcserve UDP

Arcserve as a software provider is quite an interesting company with a variety of different solutions, and their flagship solution Arcserve UDP is also quite interesting in itself. It is a rather sophisticated cloud data protection solution that offers a variety of very specific high-end features that you would usually only see in an IT-grade environment, it can perform backups and restores in highly distributed environments, replicate virtual infrastructures, perform disaster recovery operations, and so much more.

However, the complexity of this solution is a double-edged sword of sorts, with the feature set itself being a hard sell for most SMBs with the lack of any kind of public pricing available whatsoever.

Customer ratings:

• G2 – 4.3/5 stars based on 15 customer reviews

Advantages:

• As a cloud solution, Arcserve Cloud Direct does not have to be physically attached to a company’s server using some form of hardware appliance, it can provide cloud-native backup and recovery options after virtual deployment
• Arcserve has plenty of different software and solutions to choose from, and Cloud Direct specifically boasts a surprisingly long list of IT-grade features when it comes to its data protection capabilities – including disaster recovery, backup operations, restore tasks, and more
• Despite the fact that Arcserve’s cloud solution boasts a large variety of complex features and capabilities, most of these features are surprisingly easy to work with and should be easy to work with for practically any IT specialist out there

Shortcomings:

• Arcserve’s lack of support for any kind of mobile device may be a dealbreaker for some potential customers, purely because of how many mobile devices are used inside of a single company on a regular basis
• There is no public information about the pricing of Arcserve’s cloud solution, but the variety of different expert-level features make sure that this particular offering would not be suitable for smaller businesses whatsoever, and the lack of any kind of approximate pricing may even turn some of the bigger clients away
• Arcserve Cloud Direct may be a cloud-centric solution, but the fact that it does not have any form of data deduplication to reduce storage requirements is not a good look from the competitive standpoint
• Some of Arcserve’s tools and offerings are not as tightly integrated as they perhaps should be, causing potential pain to the user.
• Dedicated and specialized infrastructure may be needed

Pricing:

• Arcserve does not usually reveal any kind of pricing information about its solutions publicly. As such, the only way to receive such information for a company is for that company to request a personalized quote.

My personal opinion on Arcserve:

Arcserve as a software provider is not exactly the most popular company on this market, but it would not be true to call it completely unknown, either. Arcserve offers a variety of different solutions and software to choose from, one of which being their UDP solution – a comprehensive cloud-oriented data protection platform with a lot of features that are usually only present in very complex enterprise-level backup software. Unfortunately, this kind of complexity is also one of the biggest detriments of Arcserve’s popularity, leading to both small and large companies not picking it for one reason or another – but it still has its audience, and can work for middle-sized IT teams that know what they’re doing. There are also reports that is can be very heavy on network bandwidth and needs specialized equipment.

Conclusion

Enterprise backup solution market is vast and highly competitive, which is both a positive and a negative factor for all customers. The positive factor is that the competition is at an all-time high and companies strive to implement new features and improve existing ones to stay ahead of their competitors, offering their customers an experience that is constantly evolving and improving.

The negative factor, on the other hand, is that the wealth of options makes it extremely difficult to choose one single solution for your company. There are so many different factors that go into choosing an enterprise backup solution that the process itself can become really tough.

In this article, we have attempted to present a long list of different enterprise backup solutions with all of their unique features, positive and negative sides, user reviews, etc. Commvault would be a great option for a large enterprise that is not shy of spending extra to receive one of the best feature sets on the market. Acronis Cyber Backup is a great choice for larger companies that are dealing with a lot of sensitive data, as it can offer one of the most sophisticated data security feature sets on the market.

Alternatively, there are also backup solutions such as Bacula Enterprise that can offer additionally high security and flexibility. It offers coverage to companies with many different storage types in place – from physical drives to virtual machines, databases, containers and clusters, with up to 10,000 endpoints covered at the same time. Its non-capacity-based licensing model presents the opportunity to make savings over other vendors. Bacula typically provides ultra-fast data recovery, and an exceptionally broad range of features, ranging from fairly common to extremely unusual, and even some technologies that are proprietary, such as Global Endpoint Deduplication, Filesystem Deduplication, or Progressive Virtual Full backup type.

All in all, figuring out a specific solution for your company is no easy task, and we hope that this article was helpful to you in providing as much information about a number of different offerings as possible.

Why you can trust us

Bacula Systems is all about accuracy and consistency, our materials always try to provide the most objective point of view on different technologies, products, and companies. In our reviews, we use many different methods such as product info and expert insights to generate the most informative content possible.

Our materials offer all kinds of factors about every single solution presented, be it feature sets, pricing, customer reviews, etc.  Bacula’s product strategy is overlooked and controlled by Jorge Gea – the CTO at Bacula Systems of Bacula Systems, and Rob Morrison – the Marketing Director of Bacula Systems.

Before joining Bacula Systems, Jorge was for many years the CTO of Whitebearsolutions SL, where he led the Backup and Storage area and the WBSAirback solution. Jorge now provides leadership and guidance in current technological trends, technical skills, processes, methodologies and tools for the rapid and exciting development of Bacula products. Responsible for the product roadmap, Jorge is actively involved in the architecture, engineering and development process of Bacula components. Jorge holds a Bachelor degree in computer science engineering from the University of Alicante, a Doctorate in computation technologies and a Master Degree in network administration.

Rob started his IT marketing career with Silicon Graphics in Switzerland, performing strongly in various marketing management roles for almost 10 years. In the next 10 years, Rob also held various marketing management positions in JBoss, Red Hat, and Pentaho ensuring market share growth for these well-known companies. He is a graduate of Plymouth University and holds an Honours Digital Media and Communications degree, and completed an Overseas Studies Program.