In the third quarter of 2003, Taneja Group completed a comprehensive end user analysis of next generation data protection trends, focusing on disk-based backup and restore technologies. To collect our data, we conducted interviews with 235 North American IT executives and managers. This statistically significant survey enabled Taneja Group to develop the industry's first glimpse into the overall landscape and future trajectory of disk-based data protection. Among the key insights, Taneja Group determined that the overwhelming majority of end users perceive disk-based solutions as a "critical component" of their future secondary storage infrastructure.

Our research reveals that disk-based backup has already been invested in with significant perceived value by end users, including those who have yet to deploy the technology. Furthermore, in a rare case of reality tracking with hype, we routinely see that end users who have deployed disk-based solutions find that these offerings fulfill its promise, greatly improving their data protection infrastructure in a number of significant ways. Still, many questions remain regarding optimal deployment models, competing technology approaches, and acquisition economics, to name but a few open questions. In order to further develop and provide qualitative color to these open questions, Taneja Group has begun exploring the existing disk-based storage customer base in even more depth, with the goal of identifying key usage model trends, perceived advantages and disadvantages, and the remaining or unanswered challenges for disk-based backup and restore adoption.

We encourage the reader to use this report as a launching point for understanding this emerging space of disk-based technologies. Our goal is to create a detailed tool that may provide end users with a useful evaluative summary of the state of the industry, and more importantly, provide some candid feedback on a leading product in this market segment.