The magic of software is its ability to become smarter over time, achieving new efficiencies and overall making our lives easier.  Software services is the glue that can bring together the disparate components of the datacenter, humming along harmoniously.  Yes, the services-model seems to solve a lot of problems for IT — except for a few sour notes, one being the lack of attention paid to backup.  According to analyst firm Wikibon, backup remains a “weak link in the goal to transform IT services.”

There’s been several attempts to shift the backup paradigm, most notably from Jim McNiel, chief at FalconStor, who has an unfulfilled services vision, and NetApp, unable to fully scale its snapshot method.  Despite the limited market, it’s still surprising that the answer to the backup conundrum would come from a major vendor like EMC.

EMC’s backup plan pays off

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The storage provider’s been hoarding storage products for a while now, preparing a few paths for whatever the future of computing may hold.  Instead of falling asleep at the helm, EMC’s delivered a three-pronged plan to turn backup into a service, with the right messaging to seal the deal.  The plan has paid off: according to IDC’s latest report, EMC Q4 saw a 30.7 per cent share of the external disk systems market, a sector that saw annual growth of 2.3 per cent to slightly more than $6.7 billion.

If you’re into corporate videos you may have seen EMC’s latest campaign, with its own version of ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption show called “Backup Gameday.”  Wikibon’s chief analyst Dave Vellante calls the series a little “cheesy,” but full of useful content regarding EMC’s goals for Backup-as-a-Service.  He highlights one clip in particular, where Stephen Manley, the CTO of EMC’s backup division, outlines a three-pronged strategy that involves:

1. Consolidation of backup infrastructure
2. Integration with data sources, namely the virtualized infrastructure, application infrastructure and storage infrastructure
3. Data management services – to provide visibility and value added capabilities to “accelerate the business.”

See the slide Manley presented below:

Sweetening the backup suite

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EMC’s made strides to pump out Backup services, unveiling Data Protection Advisor 6, the newest version of its backup management suite. Tom Giuliano, a senior product manager for the company, blogged the news on Monday.

DPA 6 is more powerful than its predecessors, thanks to a number of improvements that EMC added in to address the needs of modern IT environments.  The list includes an automated installation wizard that reduces deployment to a matter of minutes, and a reworked architecture that is more robust than previous iterations.

In addition to these changes, the company threw in a set of highly customizable dashboards that admins can leverage to customize DPA for their organization’s infrastructure. There’s also a new real-time monitoring and analysis tool that can be used to spot bottlenecks early, and improve service predictability. The software sends an alert to the admin in charge when an anomaly shows up in the logs.

EMC still needs standard interfaces

“I like the vision and we’re starting to see EMC put out real products that support the vision but I definitely want to see more,” says Vellante in a review posted on the analyst’s blog.  “The company has a diverse portfolio comprising backup software (Networker) and two backup platforms (Data Domain and Avamar) and customers want to see these come together. Backup as a service is the right vision to abstract EMC’s complex backup portfolio. What’s needed to really accelerate value in my view are sets of products to integrate the various capabilities across EMC’s portfolio and provide common interfaces into and out of the infrastructure layer.

“Specifically, we envision a model where the technology layer is abstracted from the user and IT administrator. Customers will build a technology portfolio using best-of-breed products and construct sets of services that meet business requirements.”

Concept: enhancing EMC’s backup value

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Vellante provides a more detailed vision of how this enhanced service model could be implemented in his full report here, citing conceptual example from John Blackman, a Wikibon member and practitioner that has implemented services oriented storage.  In summary:

• Defining, communicating and offering sets of pre-packaged services that can be purchased and consumed in a menu-like fashion;
• Charging (back) for services consumed with transparent pricing and usage metrics;
• Reducing complexity by winnowing the number of suppliers and “one-off” configurations that create migration headaches down the road;
• Evolving service offerings as business needs warrant and technology matures.

Pushing forward with Backup-as-a-Service

The data center is undergoing a massive transformation, and between virtualization and Services, that transformation is expected to become more efficient over time.  EMC’s not the only major vendor transitioning to a services model, seeking better ways to serve up backup.  HP is working on a 5 year plan that will surely strengthen its backup offerings, which trail EMC’s market share in this space by about 8 percent (that’s a 16 percent market share).  Dell’s also been vocal about its plans to privatize its company and focus on services, though its lost shares in the backup market, dropping to 11.4 percent from 12.7 percent.

Contributors: Maria Deutcher