According to market research firm IDC’s (News - Alert) definition, a purpose-built backup appliance (PBBA) is a standalone disk-based solution that utilizes software, disk arrays, server engine(s), or nodes that are used for a target application to back up data . Specifically, this data comes from a backup application such as NetWorker, NetBackup, TSM, or Backup Exec, or it can be integrated with the backup software to catalog, index, schedule, and perform data movement.
PBBA appliances are deployed in standalone configurations or as gateways. The research firm’s latest report, "Worldwide Purpose-Built Backup Appliance 2012–2016 Forecast and 2011 Vendor Shares,” highlights some key trends in the appliance deployment space.
According to the informative report, the worldwide PBBA market totaled $2.4 billion in revenue during 2011, a 43.4 percent increase over 2010. It also shows that EMC (News - Alert) continues to dominate the market, capturing 65.5 percent share in 2011.
This growth is primarily attributed to the increased use and customer adoption of PBBA systems for backup, recovery, and storage optimization with the use of data deduplication. IDC expects that the total worldwide PBBA revenue will grow and total nearly $5.9 billion by the end of 2016.
Additionally, EMC continued to hold the lead in 2011 with the aggregate worldwide PBBA share of 65.5 percent for a total revenue of $2.4 billion and 64.7 percent of the total raw capacity of 927,474 TB. Furthermore, the report shows that IBM (News - Alert) holds the second spot with 15.3 percent of the total PBBA revenue and 9.2 percent of overall raw capacity shipped. The other three vendors in the top five include Hewlett-Packard, Symantec, and Quantum (News - Alert).
In order to prove successful in this space, the research firm recommends that vendors demonstrate the utility and value of using PBBA solutions in concert with existing data protection infrastructure, software and hardware. Moreover, they must also allow for non-disruptive integration of PBBA solutions to customers' existing data protection and disaster recovery frameworks so they need not change any procedures and policies.
It is crucial that vendors support industry-standard interfaces, APIs, and application software to ease appliance deployment and continuously add features that optimize storage efficiency and security, while providing a more cohesive DR approach such as data deduplication, encryption, or replication.
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Edited by Jamie Epstein