CDP Gets SNIA'd

Not sure what CDP is? You're about to have your consciousness raised.

A group of 14 vendors has launched a new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) special interest group within the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), signaling an increase in attention for this technology trend (see SNIA Establishes CDP SIG).

CDP refers to software that combines data backup, replication, snapshotting, and other techiques. Typically, it creates one backup followed by efficient replication of any change that is made to the data. Since the updates are ongoing, CDP allows for rapid data restoral in case of an outage, and it also makes it possible to go back to a specific point in the life of the data.

The new forum seems to be as much about marketing this emerging technique as it is about setting standards for its use. Interestingly, some of the founding members of the SNIA CIG include biggies who haven't yet unveiled CDP products, such as EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) and Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS).

"At the moment, we don't have a CDP product," says EMC spokesman Todd Cadley. But joining the SNIA SIG indicates EMC is "obviously moving toward a strategy" that includes CDP. A product will come in three to four months, he says.Likewise, Veritas's Backup Exec 10.0 supports replication as well as backup, but it doesn't yet combine the two. A spokesman says the next upgrade, due later this year, will do just that.

Other big vendors joining the SIG, including Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) and Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW), appear to be working on CDP as part of their midrange offerings (see SAN Sales Thick in the Middle).

Many of the vendors in the new SIG are smaller companies that have focused on this area for awhile, including the likes of Alacritus Software Inc., InMage Systems Inc., Revivio Inc., and XOsoft. Some, such as TimeSpring Software Corp., are complete neophytes.

Windows predominates many of presently available offerings, such as those from TimeSpring, and even though it's absent from the membership roster, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) has taken a significant interest in working with CDP players and wannabes (see Startups Go the Distance).

Just a couple of companies, such as Revivio and XOsoft, currently offer CDP products for Unix.While the SNIA SIG hopes to market members' wares, educate the public, and create some specs, it doesn't represent all CDP interests. At least one company, NSI Software Inc., does not appear on the founding roster, but says CDP is one of its stocks in trade. "Technically, we've done CDP for ten years," says Jason Buffington, director of business continuity at NSI. Wherever replication cuts data recovery times to minutes and seconds instead of days and hours, he says, CDP is doing its work.

Bottom line? CDP's gathering interest, particularly among vendors like EMC and Veritas. Whether you agree with one definition or the other, there will likely be some dramatic rollouts later this year, when action in this particular segment could start to snowball.

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch