IT Decision-Maker Perspectives on NetApp SnapVault Disk-to-Disk Vs. Traditional Backup Solutions

UPDATED January 2008 with new customer data on the impact of NetApp deduplication technology Total Cost Comparison of Backup Technologies: IT Decision-Maker Perspectives on NetApp SnapVault Disk-to-Disk Versus Traditional Tape-Based Backup Solutions Fe bruary 2006 Prepared for:

© Copyright 2008, Oliver Wyman. All rights reserved. Total Cost Comparison: NetApp SnapVault vs. Tape-based Backups
TABLE OF CONTENTS




Updates to Original Study 1




Executive Summary 2




Approach and Methodology 4
A. Oliver Wyman's Research Approach 4 B. Defining Total Cost 4 C. Establishing a "Standard" Backup Environment 5 D. Typical Customer Backup Environments 6 E. Other Performance Factors (Not Included in Total Cost Analysis) 6




Detailed Findings 9
A. Overall Total Cost Comparison 9 B. Detail #1: Comparing Product Acquisition & Ongoing Vendor Costs 10 C. Detail #2: Comparing Direct Internal Costs 13 D. Detail #3: Comparing Quantifiable Business Cost of Downtime 16




Conclusion 20

Updates to Original Study
Oliver Wyman's original "Total Cost Comparison Study of Backup Technologies," published in February 2006, was based on cost data acquired from primary research with IT managers responsible for their backup environment. Each study participant provided robust details on Product Acquisition & Ongoing Vendor Costs, Direct Internal Costs, and Quantifiable Business Cost of Downtime. Recently, Oliver Wyman conducted primary research with new customers to understand the effect of NetApp deduplication technology on total cost. As part of that research, Oliver Wyman quantified the incremental impact of NetApp deduplication, which leads to additional space savings in the backup environment, resulting in lower product acquisition costs and thus a higher total cost advantage for NetApp customers. These changes have been incorporated into this version of the report, updated in January 2008, with a notation where updates have been made. It is important to note that the additional benefits apply only to the subset of customers that have deployed NetApp deduplication. Therefore the base comparison from February 2006 remains in this report as well. All other findings in the study remain consistent with the original report and are based on the interviews conducted with storage decision makers about their backup storage environments.
Page 1 Total Cost Comparison: NetApp SnapVault vs. Tape-based Backups Updated with NetApp Deduplication
Executive Summary
Oliver Wyman, a global strategy consulting firm, was engaged by NetApp to conduct primary research on the cost of acquiring, deploying, managing, and maintaining data backup environments used to ensure the safety and security of corporate data. The NetApp objective for this study was to understand the total cost in typical enterprise deployments of two competing backup technologies: NetApp SnapVault® disk-to-disk backup systems and traditional tape-based backup technologies. The findings included in this report are Oliver Wyman's, based exclusively on specific data provided by the backup operators, storage administrators, and IT managers who participated in this study. The key findings of this research include: . NetApp SnapVault is considerably less expensive than tape backup alternatives. ? Based on typical configurations and backup policies, a NetApp SnapVault backup system is 48%-54% less expensive than a tape-based backup solution of similar capacity and size over a typical backup product lifecycle. ? Additionally, a NetApp SnapVault backup system with NetApp deduplication technology is 57%-63% less expensive than a tape-based backup solution of similar capacity and size over a typical product lifecycle. Figure 1 - Relative Cost Advantage of NetApp vs. Tape Updated with Typical Backup Environments NetApp Deduplication
57% 63% Total Cost less lessIndex Updated with (Normalized to Updated with DeduplicationOverall Total Cost Deduplicationof NetApp SnapVault Disk-to-Disk Backup)
NetApp NetApp with Tape-Based NetApp NetApp with Tape-BasedSnapVault Deduplication Backup, no SnapVault Deduplication Backup,Backup Remote Sites Backup IncludingRemote Sites This study includes all costs that could be d... [download for more]