DCIG is pleased to announce the immediate availability of its 2022-23 TOP 5 report on Large Enterprise AWS Cloud Backup Solutions. This TOP 5 report provides large enterprises guidance on the best backup solutions for backing up and recovering applications, data, and workloads they host in Amazon Web Services (AWS).
AWS Maintains its Cloud Leadership Position
Enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure continues to experience double digit growth. Between 2021 and 2022, spending in the overall cloud market grew by 29 percent.
Of the monies spent on cloud infrastructure, a recent survey of cloud market spending found AWS remained the cloud market leader with 34 percent market share. Equally notable, AWS grew its market share one percent quarter over quarter even as its competitors declined or stayed the same.
Enterprises select AWS over its competitors for many reasons. It offers a wide range of compute instances and storage types available at multiple capacity, performance, and price points. It provides complementary cloud services such as analytics, artificial intelligence, containers, Internet of Things (IoT), and Kubernetes, plus many more. It currently has 84 Availability Zones with data centers in 26 geographic regions with announced plans to add more.
Taken together, these benefits make a compelling argument for enterprises to adopt and embrace AWS. Yet as enterprises host more applications, data, and workloads in AWS, they must also take steps to protect them.
The State of Large Enterprise AWS Cloud Backup Solutions
AWS cloud backup offerings fall broadly into two categories: backup-as-a-service (BaaS) and backup software deployed on VMs. However, some AWS cloud backup providers offer both.
In the BaaS category, enterprises subscribe to the BaaS to back up their applications and data in the AWS cloud. The BaaS provider then performs the BaaS’s ongoing infrastructure maintenance, such as fixes, patches, and updates. This approach frees enterprises to focus solely on backups and recoveries without needing to maintain the backup software.
Backup software deployed on VMs takes an approach comparable to performing on-premises backup. Enterprises obtain an appropriately sized Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) instance from AWS to host the backup software. They license, install, and maintain the backup solution themselves. They configure it to back up their applications hosted in AWS. In many respects, they manage this backup software in AWS the same way they do now.
When DCIG last evaluated AWS cloud backup solutions in 2020, backup software deployed on VMs typically won out. At that time, BaaS lacked many features that enterprises required to justifiably adopt and deploy backup in AWS.
These factors contribute to the 2022 list of TOP 5 large enterprise AWS cloud backup solutions looking different than 2020. The biggest difference shows up in that enterprises may obtain any of the TOP 5 AWS cloud backup solutions as a BaaS. This eliminates the need for enterprises to have to pick and choose between backup scalability and its breath of features. They can now frequently get both from the same offering.
These improvements in AWS BaaS solutions position enterprises to choose BaaS. However, differences between BaaS solutions remain. Some operate and store their data in AWS. Some only provide all their features in some AWS regions. Other operate and store backups outside AWS entirely. Still others give them a choice in where they store backups and perform recoveries.
Large Enterprise AWS Cloud Backup Solutions
In preparing this report, DCIG identified over 30 solutions in the marketplace that offer backup capabilities for AWS. Of these, DCIG identified and classified fifteen of them as meeting DCIG’s definition of a large enterprise AWS cloud backup solution. These fifteen solutions target large enterprise environments in their admin, user, and online documentation and strive to meet their needs.
DCIG evaluated these AWS cloud backup solutions based on multiple different features and capabilities. The general categories under which these features fell included:
- Backup administration
- Backup capabilities
- Configuration, licensing, and pricing
- Recovery and restores
- Support
Based on these criteria, DCIG awarded the following enterprise backup solutions a TOP 5 ranking:
- Cobalt Iron Compass
- Cohesity DataProtect BaaS
- Commvault Complete Data Protection/Metallic DMaaS
- IBM Spectrum Protect Family
- HYCU Protege for AWS
Shared Characteristics
In reviewing these solutions, DCIG noted the TOP 5 solutions shared the following characteristics:
- Backup and restore individual VMs at the file, folder, volume, and VM image levels
- Encrypt data at-rest and in-flight
- Free trial period.
- Generate alerts on backup data growth and storage thresholds
- Include one or more standard backup policies.
- Index protected data
- Integration with single sign-on solutions
- Perform cloud-to-cloud (C2C), instant, and virtual-to-virtual (V2V) recoveries
- Perform full and incremental backups
- Protect all operating systems offered by AWS on its EC2 instances.
- Protect Microsoft Active Directory, Exchange and SharePoint hosted in the AWS cloud
- Protect VMware applications running in VMware cloud on AWS
- Support storing backup data on S3 Standard targets in the same or different AWS Regions
- Vault backups.
Key Differences
The TOP 5 solutions also differ in some ways in how they respectively back up and recover applications and data in the AWS cloud. These differences include:
- The hosting of their BaaS offering. While all TOP 5 solutions make their software available as a BaaS, they host it in different clouds.
- BaaS billing and licensing. Each solution provides multiple billing and licensing options from which enterprises may choose. In most but not all cases they will need to subscribe to the BaaS for at least one year.
- Storage backup targets. While all support using S3 Standard as a backup target, they differ in their support of other AWS storage types and the different S3 tiers. Each backup offering provides enterprises with various options to utilize these different tiers for these purposes.
- Protection of AWS databases. Not every TOP 5 backup solution offers the ability to back up and recover AWS databases.
Report Availability
The full TOP 5 report is available for download immediately. The full report contains additional details such as:
- A listing of all fifteen backup solutions evaluated
- AWS cloud backup features that all large enterprise AWS cloud backup solutions share
- A profile of each TOP 5 large enterprise AWS cloud backup solution that lists the ways it differentiates itself from the other solutions
Other than excerpts from this report published in this announcement, the contents of the DCIG 2022-23 TOP 5 AWS Cloud Backup Solutions Large Enterprise Edition report are copyrighted and may not be republished without permission.
Individuals may access the full report by following this link to Cobalt Iron’s website. Cobalt Iron has licensed this report and made it freely available after registration.
Keep Up to Date with DCIG
DCIG will release more TOP 5 reports in the weeks and months to come. To be apprised of these announcements, and if you have not already done so, please sign up for the weekly DCIG Newsletter so we may notify you of their availability.
To learn about DCIG’s forthcoming research and publications, see the DCIG Editorial Calendar.
Technology providers interested in licensing DCIG TOP 5 reports or having DCIG produce custom reports, please contact DCIG for more information.