Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup and Recovery Software Solutions
Gartner defines enterprise backup and recovery software solutions as technology that captures a point-in-time copy (backup) of enterprise data in on-premises, hybrid, multicloud and software as a service (SaaS) environments. These solutions write this data to one or more secondary storage targets for the primary purpose of recovering it in case of loss. Solutions must offer effective capabilities to simplify the management of data protection across complex enterprise environments. They must also ensure reliable recovery not just from accidental or operational errors but also from data loss arising from constantly changing threats, and expedite and orchestrate data recovery responses to traditional disaster and ransomware events.
Vendors must, among other requirements:
A: This research covers the enterprise backup and recovery software solutions market, evaluating 13 vendors across multiple criteria including product capabilities, market execution, innovation, and vision. It assesses vendors' abilities to protect data across on-premises, hybrid, multicloud, and SaaS environments, including coverage of ransomware detection and recovery capabilities, GenAI integration, BaaS offerings, and support for diverse workloads including virtual machines, databases, containers, cloud-native applications, and SaaS platforms.
A: This research should be used by Infrastructure and Operations (I&O) leaders responsible for backup operations who need to assess and select enterprise backup and recovery solutions. It is particularly valuable for organizations looking to: protect critical business applications and data across distributed environments (data center, hybrid, multicloud, SaaS); implement or enhance ransomware protection and recovery capabilities; evaluate vendor-hosted backup services and immutable data vault offerings; understand market trends in AI/GenAI integration for backup operations; and make informed decisions about backup architecture modernization and vendor selection for upper-midmarket and large enterprise deployments.
A: Mandatory features for vendors included in this market are: 1) Backup of data and systems across on-premises and hybrid multicloud environments, including operating systems, files, databases, virtual machines, applications, IaaS, PaaS, DBaaS and SaaS; 2) Recovery of data and systems from any failure or data loss scenario with capabilities to implement backup policies supporting RPOs, RTOs, resilience, data life cycle and compliance; 3) Integration with immutable backup storage targets or delivery of vendor-provided immutable storage.
A: Vendors may be excluded for several reasons including: relying primarily on third-party software; providing only backup storage without management capabilities; backing up only to cloud without local copies; deriving over 75% revenue from MSPs; focusing only on homogeneous environments, SaaS-only backup, endpoints, remote offices/SMB, or specific storage systems; offering only replication/DR tools; focusing on storage array snapshot management; targeting primarily copy data management, DevOps, or continuous data protection use cases.
A: Ability to Execute measures current performance including product capabilities, financial viability, sales success, market responsiveness, marketing reach, and customer satisfaction. It evaluates how well vendors deliver today. Completeness of Vision assesses strategic direction and future potential, including market understanding, product strategy, innovation, business model sustainability, and geographic expansion plans. It evaluates how well-positioned vendors are for tomorrow's market requirements.