How to go about the Backup Software Purchase Decision?

The more popular methodology for analyzing competing brands is to define the main attributes used by the industry to describe its offerings and to examine the product features of each brand in the light of these attributes. Here are 6 easy steps to make sure that you will buy the right backup software.

Step 2: "Cost of Ownership" or "Value for Money"

The second attribute relates to the initial outlay and the related running costs of the backup software. In essence, here you must determine whether the features contained in the products under review truly represent value for money over the life-time of the product.

Although, some of the competing brands cost under $100, some may be more costly than others to administer. For example, if the compression technology of any particular product is not good, backups take longer and are spread over a larger number of media (taking up more storage space). Therefore, although a product may be less pricey, it may be more expensive to run in the long term.

Consider the following questions and issues:

• What is the price-functionality relationship? Does the vendor offer limited functionality with the "bare-bones" product and more functionality pricey "add-ons" that only together will the product provide the required protection?
• Does the product sacrifice performance and reliability for price?
• Does the purchase of the product require training? How much does this training cost? Do all the users of the product require intensive training?
• How much does it cost to take out a support agreement?
• Does the vendor offer Service Level Agreements? Are they included in the price of the product? Are upgrades and patches available at a charge? How long does it take for the vendor to answer technical and related queries?
• Does installation require a long time thus increasing the cost of set-up? Does product administration take long?
• Do you take long to run backups and restores? Can the backup or restore be performed in the background?
• Are the product features designed to minimize and avoid downtime when running backups?
• Does the product have a strong compression functionality that aims to reduce the speed of backup and decrease the size of the backup archive (hence reducing the amount of storage media)?
• Can you select from the varying levels of compression and encryption? Are there any speed comparisons that have been carried out by the vendor and by independent reviewers?
• What do independent reviews by magazines say about the company and the products in respect to cost effectiveness and cost of ownership?

Step 3 and 4: Performance and Reliability

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