Dell just announced new data protection solutions at Dell Technologies World 2019. While the event is set in Las Vegas, don’t take it as an invitation to gamble with your data! Our research shows that 57% of organizations state that their tolerance for high-priority application downtime
is less than 15 minutes or 15 minutes to less than one hour. In other words, no time for downtime…data protection is clearly a great business to be in!
Dell already offers a very complete (and successful) portfolio of data protection solutions and with these recent announcements the company is positioning itself for the next waves of data protection challenges and evolution, in particular with the introduction of PowerProtect, a software and appliance-delivered solution that should send a pretty clear message to competitors as it responds to evolving customer needs.
Dell EMC PowerProtect is brand spanking new. It’s a software-defined platform that the company is positioning as a data protection and data management solution. It’s not based on “legacy” code, and it comes out the door as software or as a scale-out appliance (Dell EMC PowerProtect X400). It’s clearly focused on VMware environments with automated policy-based backup, recovery, and integration (vSphere/vRealize), and it also provides protection for SQL and Oracle, with more to come in the future.
The platform appears to be easy to use and leverages built-in AI capabilities to provide efficient data protection, replication, and data reuse (which is where the notion of data management comes in…but I think we will need to hear more about this aspect). As we should expect from a modern solution, it comes with SaaS-based management and self-service capabilities.
The appliance solution comes as a hybrid or all-flash data system and can scale-up with grow-in-place capacity expansion and scale-out compute power and capacity. ESG’s first impression is that the PowerProtect X400 is a great addition to the Dell EMC backup appliance lineup. We believe that a scale-out architecture significantly increases the efficiency, extensibility, and bottom-line value of a consolidated data protection infrastructure.
But wait, there’s more! Building on its momentum with the IDPA product line, Dell is now focusing the appliance on the juicy mid-market with the Dell EMC Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA) DP4400. This appliance starts low in capacity and targets the decentralized enterprise and mid-sized organizations. It can grow in place up to 96TB. It is a great move that could create significant competitive pressures on other vendors in this space.
Dell technologies has executed very convincingly in the past few quarters across the board. This is not an opinion, it is fact.
When it comes to data protection, the company has been rationalizing its offering, focusing its marketing efforts, and, as evidenced by these announcements, is not only expanding and leveraging a successful recipe (IDPA) but also squarely looking at the future with PowerProtect. We’re in Vegas, so I am tempted to say that they are doubling down!
Execution on the product roadmap (and we expect services) and technically transitioning the installed base over time will be key moving forward. Focusing on adding more AI capabilities and data intelligence in the offering should also help create long-term differentiation in our opinion. Never a dull moment in the data protection market.
