Dell mothership hovers over backup startup, beams it aboard

Dell has acquired its own continuous data protection software by buying AppAssure for an undisclosed amount. This is a significant purchase and potentially limits future sales by Dell of CommVault and Symantec data protection software. AppAssure's technology for backup, replication and archive, is application-aware and tracks …

[Alan W. Rateliff, II]

Great product... nice job Dell

I use this product and am nothing short of extremely impressed. This is a smart move by Dell and it should worry Symantec quite a bit. My biggest concern was that this might eventually turn into a Dell-only product, being available solely on Dell servers, akin to the Dell Management system. But if Dell's branching into software, I have a little more faith (to offset to complete lack of faith and trust I now harbor for Dell's hardware side of things.)

Paris, offsetting faith and trust, and devotion. She could be your own personal Jesus.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't like it....

I tested 7 different products in two and a half months and compared the prices of them all. In the end, I went for the slightly more expensive IBM Tivoli solution for one of my clients. Not only it is a better backup service and has better technical support, but it can backup Exchange 2010 faster, easier and with much more granularity. Have said that, for smaller businesses AppAssure might be a good solution.

But I think Dell will keep it universal and not only for Dell servers. Maybe now the product will be cheaper, possibly having a better cost-benefit in the end.

[Anonymous Coward]

Possibly a good move..

IMHO Dell customers tend to bypass the offerings from Commvault (and sometimes Symantec) as they often have an existing, cheaper backup solution.

If they sell this at the right price, and it has Enterprise level functionality, they could be on to a winner here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Commvault should be more worried than Symantec. Dell account for 25% of Commvault revenues. That's a lot of potential loss, a fact that was noted by shareholders and reflected in the drop in CVLT share price last week...