It’s Hip to Be Square: What the Gartner Magic Quadrant Means to You

Technology industry research firm, Gartner, recently released the 2015 Magic Quadrant (MQ) for Enterprise Backup Software and Integrated Appliances. Symantec is again positioned as a Leader in this year's report. Symantec has been a leader in every Gartner Magic Quadrant in Backup and Recovery Software* 1999 – 2015, and is the #1 market share leader.(1)

In addition, Symantec has the fastest-growing integrated purpose-built backup appliance (PBBA)(2) in the market and NetBackup just took home Storage Magazine’s The Storage Awards 2015 for Data Protection Product of the Year. 

Figure 1 - Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup Software and Integrated Appliance(3)

Source:  Gartner (June 2015)

We’re thrilled with this top industry recognition and to our customers and partners – we say, “Thank You!” Without the “Power of Love” you show us in providing feedback on our services and solutions it simply would not be possible to receive this long-standing and unique recognition.

What is the Gartner Magic Quadrant?

For those not familiar with the Magic Quadrant, it’s an annual report published by Gartner for a number of different technology segments. It’s “a first step to understanding the technology providers you might consider for a specific investment”(4) and helping you determine the questions you want to ask potential technology providers.

We agree the Magic Quadrant is a great first step in the process of preparing a shortlist of backup and recovery vendors for your organization. In addition, we also encourage you to consider some of the trends that are having the most significant impact on how you protect and recover your data, applications and environments today, and in the future.

Role of Integrated Appliances

Last year Gartner expanded the Backup & Recovery software report to include integrated appliances. While we are extremely proud of being in the Leaders Quadrant again, we do not believe integrated appliances and specifically the NetBackup appliances received their proper recognition;

1. Customer count: we have sold, fulfilled, and currently support more than 13,000 integrated appliances to 3,000+ customers worldwide. This generated over $1B of combined SW and HW booking in 4 years.
2. Market leader: We offer a highly scalable backup and recovery platform available as either software or as an integrated appliance.
3. Value: Our customers tell us that both NetBackup and integrated appliances reduce complexity and operating expenditures.

• NetBackup customers experience an average of 30 percent reduction in operating expenses (OpEx) and payback within 15 months after their initial investment.
• NetBackup integrated backup appliances save both time and money, reducing 45% of first year costs and 39% of ongoing costs associated with build your own media servers.

What makes us the experts?

Each year we hear from tens of thousands of our NetBackup and Backup Exec customers around the globe – whether during our live customer forums, onsite customer visits, through our vast partner ecosystem, or on social media. So while the Gartner Magic Quadrant is an important first step in your evaluation process, we also want to provide our perspective on what matters most to our customers for their backup and recovery solution:

1. More data, less time: Our customers have more data, applications and environments to protect than ever before – and they have less time to do it. They are looking for high-performance solutions that scale quickly.
   
   1. Scalability:  according to independent third-party research, Symantec is the King of Scale. A series of benchmark reports demonstrates scalable performance gains of NetBackup over its top competitors.
   2. Completeness of Solution:  enabling your organization to protect your information across any combination of platforms, applications, storage and cloud. 
2. Modernize or bust: With more data, applications and environments to protect than ever before – our customers need to modernize their data protection architecture, whether it’s physical, virtual, moving to the cloud or a hybrid combination.
   
   1. Capability:  In all environments, knowing your vendor can provide support for the newest applications is crucial. Make sure they already protect – or have engineering plans in place to protect – the latest workloads. This is our #1 priority when delivering new releases because we know backup is a foundational element of your IT architecture.
   2. Consolidation:  a key factor in complex environments. NetBackup appliances help customers realize significant OpEx savings through consolidated backup and recovery and are the fastest-growing in the integrated appliance category.
   3. Innovation:  finding a vendor to support your environment as it is now and will be in the future, is critical. It’s not just about selecting a vendor that can support the latest products and technologies, they should also be able to ensure your information is available when and where you need it. Take this example - Symantec was the only data protection vendor to offer day-zero support (supported the first day it was made available to customers) for VMware vSphere 6. 
   4. Versatility:  from the remote office to the datacenter, physical to virtual and to the cloud; Symantec offers flexible options and capabilities. These options scale from the smallest to the largest of environments, enabling us to provide the right fit for your environment and business needs.

• Cloud-ready is the new norm: our customers are rapidly adopting more cloud-centric infrastructure and service delivery models that cut costs and deployment times, while increasing service reliability. But these technologies are also creating data protection headaches. We have established a “Hybrid is the Model” motto across all of our product development plans and are already supporting this with cloud-enabling functionality in our backup and recovery solutions. We also have recently launched new Self Service capabilities to make providing backup as a service even easier.

Back to the Future – Veritas, a new leader in Information Management!

As we move closer to our official separation from Symantec to become Veritas Technologies Corporation, an independent information management company – the “startup” energy is alive and well around the globe. And, this means the best of both worlds for our customers and partners – you get the attitude of a startup with the financial and technical strength of a recognized industry titan.

To view a complimentary copy: 2015 Magic Quadrant (MQ) for Enterprise Backup Software and Integrated Appliances.

Footnotes:

*13 reports published. Titles include: Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup Software and Integrated Appliances, Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Recovery Software, Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Restore Vendors. Veritas acquired by Symantec

1. Gartner, Market Share Analysis: Enterprise Distributed System Backup/Recovery Software Market, Worldwide, 2014. Analyst(s): Jin-Sik Yim, Dave Russell, Jie Zhang. G00273622. Published: 13 May 2015.
2. IDC Worldwide Quarterly Purpose Built Backup Appliance Tracker – 2014 Q4, Publication Date: 3/23/2015
3. This Magic Quadrant graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research note and should be evaluated in the context of the entire report. The Gartner report is available upon request from Symantec. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in our research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose
4. Research Methodologies Gartner Magic Quadrant, http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/research_mq.jsp

This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document and is used with permission from Gartner. The Gartner document is available upon request from Symantec.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.