DCIG Virtual Server Backup Software Buyer's Guide Moves Closer to Reality

For this Friday's weekly recap blog entry I asked my colleague Robert "Bob" Eastman over at SMB Research, LLC, to write it for me. Bob along with Miles Prescott, the other half of the SMB Research team, are collaborating with DCIG to help produce the forthcoming Virtual Server Backup Software Buyer's Guide that we have planned for publication in October 2010.

While I am giving them some guidance on how to construct and format the Buyer's Guide, Bob and Miles are leading the charge on the research and doing the heavy lifting in preparing this Buyer's Guide. That being the case, I thought it only appropriate to permit Bob take front and center this week on DCIG's blog site so as to provide everyone an update on the progress we are making.

Bob, take it away ....

Thanks Jerome

As DGIC's Jerome Wendt wrote here several weeks ago, a Virtual Server Backup Software Buyers Guide is on its way for delivery later this year (targeting October 2010).  Miles Prescott and I, from Boston-based SMB Research LLC are collaborating with DGIC on this project.

Vendors and end-users alike should find this Buyers Guide to be invaluable.

For Vendors:

DGIC's Server Virtualization Backup Software Buyers Guide is a chance for you to immediately increase your visibility, which of course leads to more at-bats, closing more deals and shortening the sales cycle.  (Just ask DGIC's Jim Nash or Jerome about the results that those who came out on top in the 2010 Midrange Array Buyer's Guide that DCIG released in May 2010 have seen.)

This Buyers Guide will show end-users the company you are keeping in this category, and will make it easier for end-users to see the features that differentiate your solution.  Vendors should find this to be an excellent reference, marketing and prospecting tool as well as a 'sales accelerator'.

For End-Users:

This DGIC Buyers Guide will be an excellent reference for you as well. The Guide will contain a comprehensive look at the virtual server backup software landscape (we have identified over 20 products in this space). It will provide a top-level look at the solutions in this category, a standardized set of datasheets about each product illustrating what features they do and do not have, and then help you to better understand the features and functions that differentiate one vendor from another.

But virtual server backup software is also an emerging area. As such, emerging technology areas breed confusion (you know, the proverbial FUD - fear, uncertainty and doubt).  Where there is confusion, there are end-users struggling to find the right solution even as software vendors are struggling to get their software into the right hands in the most effective and efficient way possible. This Buyer's Guide should help both users and vendors in that endeavor.

Some Early Ideas and Observations about the Virtual Server Backup Software Buyer's Guide:

• This buyers Guide will be comprehensive.  Doing this the right way means including all of the vendors in the space, not just the vendors who are willing to "pay to play" their way into the Buyers Guide.  We will not ask any vendor to pay their way into any DCIG Virtual Server Backup Software Buyers Guide.  We think this will make the resulting Buyer's Guide better for everyone.
  

• A questionnaire is being sent to all vendors to complete about their product. Vendor products are changing quickly with new releases coming out almost every six months so we want this Buyer's Guide to be as accurate and up-to-date as possible. To do that, every vendor included in the Buyer's Guide is being sent a questionnaire which is going out next week in mass.
  

This will help us and you document and understand the fundamentally different ways that virtual server backups are done because each product supports different host operating systems as well as different virtual operating systems. Further, some of these solutions come with and without appliances.  (Backup appliances will the focus of a future buyers Guide).  While all of these variables make it more difficult to research and write a one-size-fits-all Virtual Server Backup Software Buyers Guide, we can only imagine the gyrations users are going through trying to pick a product that meets their needs..

• I am quickly discovering that different vendors use the same term to mean different things, and some vendors use different terms to mean the same thing.  Does 'differential backup' mean the same thing to each vendor? Do live' backup, 'dynamic' backup and 'hot' backup mean the same thing, and mean the same to each vendor?  We should be able to contribute some consistency and clarity in this Buyers Guide normalizing these terms and providing some insight into what we (and the vendors) are talking about in this regards.

Vendors, while you are charging ahead with your technology, don't forget to pay some attention to the business side.  Make it easy for end-users to find you and find out how to reach you, and you obviously get more at-bats with the end-user.  In putting this Buyer's Guide together, we are seeing more than a few speed bumps: missing, or outdated contact information on websites, challenging dial-by-name systems, outdated PR firm information, and the like.

(Now could be a great time to do an audit of how easy it is for a prospect to find you and contact you.  Miles and I see a see a 'Best Practices' article in the making.  After spending a combined 25+ years at AMR Research  - now Gartner - talking to end-users and vendors about software and technology solutions, we have some ideas here....check back with us.)

Once this Buyers Guide is complete we expect it to be better than anything else you can find in the market and for it to help users make more sense of the virtual server backup software space than almost anything else you have seen to-date or is publicly available

I would enjoy very much hearing your feedback via comment on this blog entry. You may also email me at reastman@smbresearch.net.