Over the years, the processes associated with protecting data became disjointed as vendors tried to monetize various add-on modules for a core backup and recovery application. Since then, vendors have begun to rationalize those offerings in the name of simplifying the data protection process. The latest vendor moving down that path via an update to an Adaptive Backup and Recovery Suite of data protection tools that now sport a common set of REST application programming interfaces (APIs) is Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
Stephen Spellicy, vice president product management for information management and governance HPE Software, says HPE is employing that API to modernize the overall application experience in a way that promises to make IT operations teams more agile.
“We’re knitting together the experience so it feels like a true suite,” says Spellicy.
The Adaptive Backup and Recovery Suite consists of HPE Data Protector backup and recovery software, HPE Data Navigator monitoring tools, HPE Storage Optimizer software, and HPE VM Explorer software.
Spellicy says that while HPE continues to make each of these offerings available separately, they can be collectively acquired at a cost of about $6,000 per terabyte. Most HPE customers are opting for the premium edition of the suite, says Spellicy.
Longer term, Spellicy says, there’s a clear trend toward consolidation across the data protection software category. In the case of HPE, that trend will only accelerate as more data protection modules are built on top of the REST API, says Spellicy.
The days when IT organizations would put up with cumbersome approaches to data protection spanning multiple modules sporting different user interfaces are coming to an end. The issue going forward will be determining what merits status as a module that an organization should pay extra for versus what really should be a feature of the overall suite.
