The PBBA (Purpose-Built Backup Appliance) market growth is still expanding, with worldwide PBBA factory revenues growing by 4.1% year on year in the 4th quarter of 2015. PBBAs are specifically useful for start-up companies experiencing rapid growth and expansion, and as a result develops a need to step up from entry level backup strategies.

Alleviating the pressure

These companies are in a position where they have to formulate their backup strategies from scratch and by themselves. Chances that rapidly growing start-up companies have the capital to expand their own IT departments into a comprehensive IT “one-stop solution shop” are very slim. These IT departments probably consist of one or two IT administrators who are over-worked and underpaid, and that outsource a lot of the more intricate and complex work to other more experienced vendors.

In this instance, you have to ask yourself what would be more beneficial for the company: building, configuring, managing, maintaining your own backup strategy (with minimal technical support and higher risk of data loss); or, investing in a managed service PBBA, where everything is taken care of and you can sleep soundly knowing your backups are taken care of?

It would be brave, adventurous yet treacherous to attempt the former, and foolish not to undertake the latter.

Considering the Cloud

When choosing a managed service PBBA, we recommend that the backup appliance is not the only place where backups can be stored. In combination with the backup appliance it is wise to either mirror the data to alternative offsite backup server, or make use of cloud backup services.

Three Advantages of Investing in Managed Service PBBAs

1. The part where it says Managed Service.Managed Service PBBArefers to the fact that all the complexities of the backup appliance are supplied by the chosen service provider. You do not need to worry about software- and hardware configuration and maintenance; deduplication of data; mirroring the data to an off-site location, etc.
2. Utilising the ingenious nature of the Hybrid Cloud through the use of PBBAs. With the implementation of a backup appliance, one can utilise the idea of the Hybrid Cloud by combining an on-site backup appliance with additional integrated cloud backup service. This will ensure that if something goes wrong with the on-premise backup, a secondary backup is available.
3. Storage efficiency and cost reduction. With the data duplication capability of storage appliances, data is intelligently optimised in order to reduce the space needed for backups. PBBAs are also resilient and not as physically frail as alternative forms of backup devices. This means that committing to a managed service PBBA will provide long term returns for your company.

If you’d like to know more about choosing the right backup device for your needs, see one of our previous articles.