Brought to you by:
Enterprise Strategy Group | Getting to the Bigger Truth™
By Nathan McAfee, Senior Economic Analyst
SEPTEMBER 2022
In general, what are the biggest challenges or concerns your organization has with cloud-based data protection services?
Source: ESG, a division of TechTarget, Inc.
APEX Backup Services is a hosted data protection solution delivered in APEX’s as-a-service model. APEX Backup Services has been designed to provide industry-leading data protection solutions that not only help companies navigate the challenges associated with modern backup, but also simplify the entire process to ensure that data is always protected, even in the most complex environments.
APEX Backup Services is a key component of the Dell APEX portfolio of offerings. ESG has recently conducted an economic validation of APEX as-a-service. To view that analysis, visit this link.
As seen in Figure 2, APEX Backup Services protects SaaS applications, hybrid workloads, and a wide variety of endpoints in a way that simplifies the complexity of modern infrastructure. APEX Backup Services is highly performant, infinitely scalable, and more importantly, exceptionally secure.
Source: ESG, a division of TechTarget, Inc.
• Consumption-based costing – When compared to the stair-step model of CapEx backup or the complexity of planning and utilizing cloud backup, APEX Backup Services shines in the ability to reduce the money that would otherwise be squandered on overprovisioning.
• Granularity in costing – APEX Backup Services provides a menu-like list of capabilities. One customer shared, “The flexibility in the APEX offering allowed us to pick the capabilities we needed and not pay for those that weren’t relevant to our success. This allowed us to pay for only what fits our organization.” Additionally, customers reported that the clear and simple billing of APEX Backup Services allows IT to bill internal groups for services. In the past, breaking down backup costs was too complex.
• Downtime avoidance – The reduction of downtime events, both planned and unplanned, saves both IT dollars and lost productivity hours of those creating revenue. ESG analysis shows that APEX Backup Services can eliminate up to 90% of instances where data is non-recoverable and reduce the time to recovery by up to 75%. In our sample company with 100 TB of backed-up data, this equates to over 850 recovered hours of recovered end-user productivity.
• Flexibility and integrations – Dell APEX Backup Services offers a comprehensive list of integrations for services such as Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, SFDC, mobile, and with RESTful APIs that facilitate integration with more third-party applications.
• Instant and infinite scalability – With APEX Backup Services, you can buy whatever capacity and level of service matches your need and almost instantly add new capacity when the demand arises. Additionally, the challenge of procurement that has created artificial stalls in enabling growth for many companies is eliminated with APEX. One customer shared, “Before APEX, it took me up to 10 months to get a switch ordered and delivered for my backup system. With APEX, these supply chain challenges were immediately alleviated.”
• Assuredness of recoverability – Backup only matters if data can be effectively restored when needed. One customer shared, “We tested recovery with APEX Backup. In our test, we had a specific critical service restored in less than 4 hours. This was impossible in our old environment; it would have taken us 48-72 hours.” ESG reviewed the restore process and found it easy to understand, while being very granular in the ability to restore what specifically was needed.
• 256 bit AES encryption – While many cloud SaaS vendors simply rely on the certifications that the CSPs provide for the infrastructure as their security model, APEX Backup Services has gone above and beyond, achieving compliance and attestations for cloud services. APEX Backup Services has ongoing third-party penetration testing conducted to identify any security vulnerabilities and ensure the highest level of security compliance.
ESG interviewed APEX Backup customers and found that, while the solution was extremely cost-effective, cost was not the key driver in their decision to change from their old backup system. The challenges of finding expertise, managing backup systems, and being able to assure senior leadership that data was secure and quickly recoverable drove them to APEX.
ESG created a model that studied both quantitative and qualitative benefits and found that APEX Backup Services directly map to the challenges that cause customers the most pain while enabling a new level of capabilities that extend the value of backup services far beyond what they can have in a traditional backup environment.
This ESG Economic Validation was commissioned by Dell Technologies and is distributed under license from TechTarget.
All product names, logos, brands, and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Information contained in this publication has been obtained by sources TechTarget, Inc. considers to be reliable but is not warranted by TechTarget, Inc. This publication may contain opinions of TechTarget, Inc., which are subject to change. This publication may include forecasts, projections, and other predictive statements that represent TechTarget, Inc.’s assumptions and expectations in light of currently available information. These forecasts are based on industry trends and involve variables and uncertainties. Consequently, TechTarget, Inc. makes no warranty as to the accuracy of specific forecasts, projections or predictive statements contained herein.
This publication is copyrighted by TechTarget, Inc. Any reproduction or redistribution of this publication, in whole or in part, whether in hard-copy format, electronically, or otherwise to persons not authorized to receive it, without the express consent of TechTarget, Inc., is in violation of U.S. copyright law and will be subject to an action for civil damages and, if applicable, criminal prosecution. Should you have any questions, please contact Client Relations at cr@esg-global.com.
Enterprise Strategy Group | Getting to the Bigger Truth™
Enterprise Strategy Group is an IT analyst, research, validation, and strategy firm that provides market intelligence and actionable insight to the global IT community.