Data protection is a strategic approach to preserving and retrieving critical data across distributed storage systems, servers, desktops, and laptops. In today’s fast-paced environment, enterprises need a holistic data protection strategy optimized for virtually any workload—whether physical, virtual, or big data. This strategy should support flexible storage options, including tape, third-party disk, appliances, integrated backup appliances, and cloud storage.

Enterprise-class data protection solutions must be comprehensive, safeguarding all data assets while supporting a wide range of servers, storage systems, hypervisors, databases, and application platforms. Scalability is key, delivering high performance, elastic automation, and centralized management based on a flexible, multi-tier architecture. This architecture allows for seamless integration across traditional disk systems, backup appliances, and big data platforms, enhancing both reliability and performance at every layer of the technology stack.

Effective data backup and recovery solutions are crucial. Surprisingly, many organizations still lack a reliable backup strategy or have never tested their recovery processes. Backup is the last line of defense, but simply copying data to tape or disk does not guarantee recoverability.