After being bumped from the top backup and recovery software spot last year by BakBone Software, CommVault's Galaxy returns to the winner's circle.

Based on user comments from this year's Diogenes Labs–Storage magazine Quality Awards survey for backup and recovery software, most backup software vendors should expect an earful of complaints the next time they visit their customers. The following was typical: "The way they manage and update software licenses on their Web site is a complete joke. Whomever [sic] created that process should be fired after they spend a couple of months on the help line." Other comments weren't so polite.

Licensing aside, the very nature of backup contributes to the unsettling feeling some users have about their backup applications because the apps extend to all parts of a storage infrastructure. "Backup products tend to tell you what's wrong with your environment," says Brian Daniels, lead storage area network/Unix engineer at Catholic Health East in Newtown Square, PA.

But not all user experiences are so dire. CommVault's Galaxy (now part of the company's newly named Simpana suite), this year's enterprise-class winner, proved that some users are quite happy with their backup and recovery (B/R) software. "Galaxy is easily the most scalable product I have ever used and my product of choice," notes one user who requested anonymity because his company discourages employees from talking to the press. "After using this, I would be hard-pressed to ever look at TSM [IBM Corp. Tivoli Storage Manager], [EMC. Corp.] NetWorker or [Symantec Corp.] Veritas [NetBackup] in my daily operations." CommVault posted a 6.16 overall score (on a scale of 1.0 to 8.0), the highest score tallied by any vendor in the three years we've conducted B/R surveys (see the "Overall ranking" section of the "Rankings of enterprise backup and recovery software," below). This was CommVault's second time in the enterprise-class winner's circle. Our 2006 winner, BakBone Software Inc.'s NetVault:Backup, didn't generate enough user responses to be statistically valid this year.

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