Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) announced the latest release of its innovative Veritas NetBackup PureDisk product and unveiled the results of a survey outlining key issues facing organizations in protecting data outside the data center. The survey findings underscore the need to employ data protection strategies which leverage innovative solutions such as NetBackup PureDisk and highlight the need for effective data protection technology in the remote office. PureDisk delivers data deduplication technology that reduces the capacity of disk required for backup in addition to more efficiently using bandwidth that exists between the remote site and the central data center.

Survey Substantiates Need for New Microsoft and SQL Server Features in NetBackup PureDisk

According to a recent survey commissioned by Symantec, respondents indicated that distribution of data occurs mainly via database data, such as Microsoft SQL Server. In addition, 25 percent of respondents said applications such as Microsoft Exchange are part of the data being backed up at the remote office. The latest release of NetBackup PureDisk provides Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server agents that deliver PureDisk storage and bandwidth efficiencies for two applications quite common at remote sites.

Additionally, PureDisk delivers its first integration point with NetBackup. Users can now export PureDisk backup data to tape as well as direct recovery from tape using NetBackup, simplifying disaster recovery and the long-term management of backup data. The latest release of NetBackup PureDisk is immediately available through Symantec's certified value-added resellers and direct sales force.

Survey Results Highlight Remote Office Backup Challenges

When asked about current backup practices, survey respondents cited a number of reasons for remote restore failure, including media failure (53 percent), corrupt backup (50 percent), no backup made (39 percent), and media loss (22 percent).  Additionally, close to half of the survey sample requires an IT person to be onsite while restoration takes place at the remote site.  Not surprisingly, reducing the time it takes to restore data and reducing man hours spent by IT backing up remote office data is considered very to extremely important by the respondents.

Most respondents (75 percent) consider security of remote office data to be either very or extremely important.  Thirty percent of respondents have lost or misplaced backup media.  An additional 12 percent have had backup media stolen, while nearly one-third of respondents are not currently encrypting backup data on tape.  NetBackup PureDisk addresses these user pain points by eliminating tape from the remote office backup equation, centralizing control at the data center, and adding technologies such as encryption within the product.

The survey was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2006.  Survey respondents included 500 IT professionals in North America.  Symantec commissioned Applied Research to conduct the survey.

"Corporations are grappling with the challenge of backing up and recovering data in remote offices.  Remote tape handling is costly on resources and puts important corporate data at risk," said Matt Kixmoeller, senior director of product management for NetBackup at Symantec. "These survey results emphasize the need for tape-less, secure data protection and easier recovery of both file and application data outside the data center.

NetBackup PureDisk enables companies to centralize data protection of files and applications at the data center and integrates with NetBackup in the datacenter to export data to tape for long-term retention and compliance."

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