Is Disk the Key to the Vault?

Storage service providers are finding that disk backup is driving a burst of growth in the small-to-medium-sized business (SMB) market.

For instance, EVault Inc., a Walnut Creek, Calif.-based backup services startup, says it's found a ton of new business in helping SMBs back up their data with disk instead of tape.

CEO Phil Gilmour says EVault has more than doubled its customer base, from 430 to 917 users, since launching its SmallBusiness Edition disk-to-disk backup service six months ago. EVault also provides tape backups but finds disk backup the more lucrative market.

Small business customers, Gilmour says, lack IT staff to manage their backups, so turning to a service is highly practical. Since they're not handling the backup themselves, they don't care if the datas on tape or disk -- as long as it’s available when needed.

Indeed, it seems many prefer disk. At least, they're not hollering to get tape back. "Two years ago, we were doing a lot of education on disk-to-disk," Gilmour says. "Today, people know disk-to-disk -- it’s a buzzword and really catching on. The price of disk has dropped so dramatically that we can provide disk-to-disk solutions on par with tape solutions.”EVault isn’t alone among disk-based service providers. Its main competitors, CommVault Systems Inc. and AmeriVault Corp. (see Disaster Recovery Goes Mainstream), also have made inroads in the SMB market, through key partnerships with hardware vendors such as Network Appliance Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP) and with resellers.

(See Sepaton's Got Virtual Tape, CommVault, NetApp Get Cozier, CommVault Signs With Open Storage, CommVault Protects MS Exchange), CommVault Pairs With Permabit, and CommVault OKs Spectra Logic iSCSI.)

AmeriVault uses EVault technology to offer offsite disaster recovery services. (See AmeriVault Debuts Enhanced Recovery, AmeriVault Goes to Church, AmeriVault Teams With Montague, and Cain Brothers Picks AmeriVault.)

None of this is to say tape's on its way out. Tape has been the traditional backup medium of choice for most small businesses, where many administrators still consider it a necessary lifeline even when using disk for backup. But increasingly, cheaper disk-based systems, and services based on disk backup, are changing minds. Some SMB users say they think tape's time is up.

“There are two types of people,” says Dave Davenport, CEO of Copan Systems Inc., a startup that will soon enter the disk backup market (see Copan Cooks Up Disk-to-Disk). “People either never want to use tape again or they say, ‘You’ll have to ply the tape from my cold dead hands.' ”Gilmour acknowledges that, while he's noticed a thaw in the resistance to disk backups since EVault opened shop in 2001, there's still a way to go. “We’re still in large part a displacement technology. Ninety-nine percent of the market is still using tape backup and software, like Veritas.”

Suppliers concur. “Nobody is leaving data on disk only for the long term,” says Advanced Digital Information Corp. (Nasdaq: ADIC) marketing director Steve Whitner. Still, ADIC, a leading tape library vendor, has taken the disk plunge, too: Last December, it launched a disk-tape combo drive (see ADIC Slips a Disk into Backup).

— Dave Raffo, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch