CDP Makes the Grade

5:25 PM -- At what point does a trend become just so much piling-on? In the case of continuous data protection (CDP), I think we can safely answer: mid February.

Maybe you've been too distracted by snowstorms, valentines, and medal counts to keep track. But CDP has been really lighting up the pixels here at Byte and Switch. (See Asempra Assembles $20M , Adaptec Intros CDP, New NAS, and SonicWall Intros CDP.)

Don't get me wrong -- we love the low-hanging fruit as much as anyone. And the headlines provoked an impromptu, virtual water cooler discussion with some colleagues about spinning off something called CDP Week. "Too niche-y," proclaimed one, as we agreed to abandon the idea. That in turn led to the inevitable discussion of what you call killing off a sister publication.

Sororicide?

Actually, Network Computing's Howard Marks may have saved us all the trouble. He oversaw the testing of eight different vendors' CDP products, and the results may surprise you. (See CDP Report Card.) All I'm going to say is that Symantec came out on top, with upstarts TimeSpring and FilesX following very closely on its heels.The story is positioned as a report card, but it's also quite a rich snapshot of where that segment of the backup market is -- not to mention the curious ways that eight vendors can define the same acronym. Howard, as usual, does a great job parsing how each company views and implements CDP, more useful than any buyer's guide.

The other good news concerns pricing. The first few iterations of CDP ware were pricey propositions -- well into the five figures. While it's not true across the board, prices have come down substantially -- right around $1,000 in one case.

Nice to see "continuous" no longer interchangeable with "costly." That just might lead to the sort of piling-on vendors like.

Terry Sweeney, Editor in Chief, Byte and Switch