McOsker won't turn backup and recovery tasks over to just anyone; the IT team will remain in charge. "We like to keep excitement on the field, not in the office," he says.
If history repeats itself, Microsoft could--in a few years--take the lead in the backup-and-recovery market, which is expected to jump to $4.8 billion by 2008, from $3.3 billion last year. That's what happened when the software vendor entered the network-attached storage market: Today it owns half of that market, less than four years after it first introduced products.
If Microsoft gains considerable ground, it could drive down prices for Windows-based backup and recovery, says Alex Gorbansky, an analyst at consulting firm Taneja Group. "Veritas has a stranglehold on the Windows backup-and-recovery market that has led to some premium pricing," Gorbansky says. Veritas declined to comment on Microsoft Data Protection Server or its own pricing.
Microsoft got endorsements from systems vendors and partners like Dell, EMC, and Hewlett-Packard, and from data-protection and -replication software vendors CommVault Systems, LiveVault, and NSI Software. It's expected that many of the partners will deliver systems built on Microsoft Data Protection Server during the second half of next year.
But not everyone is looking to buy from Microsoft. Pricing won't change much, predicts Mike Menard, systems and database administrator at industrial-tubing manufacturer Stanley Aviation Corp., which uses disaster-recovery software from Veritas. "When the time comes," Menard says, "I'll have to look at [Microsoft's product] very closely before I'd switch."
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