IBM has been recognized as a storage software Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Backup and Recovery Software¹. In its Magic Quadrants, Gartner analysts evaluate technology and solutions with an 'Ability to Execute' and a 'Completeness of Vision'.

IBM has a broad portfolio of data backup and recovery software that helps clients to protect data through a hybrid cloud model or on-premises, and is designed to make back-up and recovery of primary storage economical and dependable. IBM Spectrum Protect, enables advanced data backup and data recovery for virtual, physical, cloud and software defined environments.

IBM Spectrum Protect business partner, Cobalt Iron delivers enterprise-class cloud data protection Software as a Service (SaaS). The company developed its Adaptive Data Protection SaaS product using IBM Spectrum Protect as a core embedded application. Its hybrid cloud offering takes advantage of the deduplication, replication and compression capabilities of Spectrum Protect. This helps Cobalt Iron customers benefit from the scale, efficiencies and analytics in the cloud.

Cobalt Iron's clients face the challenge to adequately and cost effectively protect exploding volumes of data. Its hybrid cloud SaaS solution provides clients of all sizes, across banking, healthcare and insurance industries, the unique capabilities of cloud including a pay as you grow model.

"Whether our customers choose to backup data for compliance reasons or to maintain high availability of applications they're always seeking to limit costs," said Richard Spurlock, CEO and founder, Cobalt Iron. "Through the elimination of proprietary hardware stacks and appliances, IBM Spectrum Protect helps our customers save up to 75% in backup costs. In addition backup times have been reduced by up to 80% due to the performance capabilities achieved through IBM Spectrum Protect deduplication, replication and management capabilities."

By leveraging IBM Spectrum Protect's industry leading data deduplication, compression and encryption, today Cobalt Iron's ADP v3.2 can deliver millions of backup jobs per month.

"IBM leadership in data storage backup and recovery begins with the capabilities  like incremental forever backups, which unlike competitive backup methodologies that often require full backups, eliminates the need to conduct full backups," said Bina Hallman, vice president, offering management executive, IBM Software Defined Storage Solutions. "Through IBM Spectrum Protect, our clients are able to reduce cost and complexity of data protection and can confidently recover data anytime, anywhere — from on premises or stored in the cloud."

Leaders in the Magic Quadrant for Data Center Backup and Recovery Software 
According to Gartner, "Leaders have the highest combined measures of Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. They have the most comprehensive and scalable product portfolios. They have a proven track record of established market presence and financial performance. For vision, they are perceived in the industry as thought leaders, and have well-articulated plans for enhancing recovery capabilities, improving ease of deployment and administration, and increasing their scalability and product breadth. A fundamental sea change is occurring in the backup and recovery market. For vendors to have long-term success, they must plan to address the legacy requirements of traditional backup and recovery, while looking to expand their integration with and exploitation of emerging applications, hypervisors, snapshot and replication technologies, and public cloud capabilities. A cornerstone for Leaders is the ability to articulate how new requirements will be addressed as part of their vision for recovery management. As a group, Leaders can be expected to be considered part of most new purchase proposals and have high success rates in winning new business. This does not mean, however, that a large market share alone is a primary indicator of a Leader. Leaders are strategic vendors, well-positioned for the future, having established success in meeting the needs of upper midsize and large data centers."

1. Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Backup and Recovery Software by Dave Russell, Pushan Rinnen, Robert Rhame, June 8, 2016.