This post is also available in: Italian

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Dell announced the acquisition of AppAssure, a global technology leader in back-up and recovery software that protects a company’s entire application infrastructure (for more info see the company web site). The acquisition of AppAssure’s product portfolio, R&D, patent portfolio, and sales and servicing functions add data protection and recovery IP to Dell’s storage solutions offerings. Data protection and recovery is a $3.6 billion business segment projected to grow 7% per year.

Some interesting aspects of AppAssure backup solutions is that they are multi-hypervisor (actually only VMware and Hyper-V), can handle also physical systems as well as VDI deployment and have some applications modules (similar of the one included in the EqualLogic ASM/WE). Could be interesting see if there will be big integration in the storage’s snapshots technologies and the software for data protection (some was stated with CommVault to offload the EqualLogic volumes backup).

Dell has moved from a hardware vendor to a service vendor already some years ago. With the last years has consolidate his portfolio with several acquisition in order to have own products and solutions, instead of sell and deploy 3rd part solutions.

With the storage area already filled (only some PowerVault “technically” are not based on Dell own technologies) and with several changes in the networking area (with the Force10 acquisition) now seems that is moving in the backup and data protection area (and the DR4000 was a first big move).

What does (or could mean)? In the comparison page the focus is on Symantec Backup 2010 and Acronis TrueImage features, but the product seems more similar to Veeam Backup. Actually Dell main partnership on backup are CommVault and Symantec (and something with EMC Legato and still with Yosemite), but in several regions there are strong partnership also with Veeam and Quest. And I think that the first that may loose the partnership are just the last one.

But is from Veeam that there could expect some big issue: if you read the product data-sheet of the VMware backup solution you will see thee main features (Live Recovery™, Recovery Assure™, Universal Recovery™) that seems too much similar (also with the name) with the features of Veeam Backup. Who has registered this features first? We have to expect some legal battle? Let’s see…

Symantec is moving also the backup appliances solutions, will also Dell produce a similar solution? Probably not now or not in this year. They have several PowerVault NX systems that can simple be equipped with new software part, so a dedicated appliance probably is not the roadmap (or not for this year).

For other consideration see also this post.

Share

Virtualization, Cloud and Storage Architect. Tech Field delegate. VMUG IT Co-Founder and board member. VMware VMTN Moderator and vExpert 2010-20 and vExpert Pro. Dell TechCenter Rockstar 2014-15. Microsoft MVP 2014-16. Veeam Vanguard 2015-19. Nutanix NTC 2014-20. Several certifications including: VCDX-DCV, VCP-DCV/DT/Cloud, VCAP-DCA/DCD/CIA/CID/DTA/DTD, MCSA, MCSE, MCITP, CCA, NPP.