Symantec Simplifies Backup and Recovery to Help Small Businesses Protect Against Downtime

Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 Automates Data and System Protection, Speeds Recovery of Entire Systems


MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced the availability of Backup Exec System Recovery 2010, a complete data and system backup and recovery solution for small businesses. Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 automates the backup process of an entire system or individual files and folders without disrupting user productivity, and enables quick restores to the same or dissimilar hardware, virtual machines or remote locations. Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 introduces new support of the latest Microsoft operating systems, including Windows 7, Microsoft Exchange 2010 and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, easing the transition to the new platforms and ensuring continued protection during migration. With the new release, Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery will also support Linux operating systems later this year.

“Today’s small businesses need the peace of mind that only comes with a cost-effective, reliable backup and recovery solution that will protect their information and systems to minimize downtime and avoid disaster,” said Pat Hanavan, vice president, Symantec Information Management Group. “Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 provides small businesses with affordable protection so they can easily recover what they need, when they need it and to whatever physical or virtual environment they want.”

For small businesses, backup and recovery is both a challenge and a concern. According to a recent survey¹ of 1,650 small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and their customers, there is a large discrepancy between how SMBs perceive their disaster readiness and their actual level of preparedness. According to the survey, SMBs noted they were confident in their level of disaster preparedness (84 percent), but their practices reveal that this confidence is unwarranted.

The average SMB has experienced three outages within the past 12 months, with the leading causes being virus or hacker attacks, power outages or natural disasters. This is alarming as almost half report they do not yet have a plan to deal with such disruptions. While most companies deploy some form of backup, only one in five (23 percent) back up on a daily basis and 40 percent back up monthly or less. The survey also demonstrates small businesses that lose data due to disaster also lose sales and customers.

Backup Exec System Recovery provides small businesses with a single, easy-to-use solution for backup and recovery. Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 now includes Symantec’s patent-pending Granular Recovery Option, previously optional. This capability allows small businesses to back up an entire file server, desktop, laptop, virtual server or critical application server, such as Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft SharePoint, and then restore granular items such as individual Exchange emails, SharePoint documents or individual files in minutes. Backups can be saved to a variety of disk storage devices and can be copied to an off-site location or secondary disk device for disaster recovery purposes.

In addition, Backup Exec System Recovery adds new support for the latest virtual environments, including VMware vSphere 4.0, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, and Citrix XenServer 5.x. This new support ensures that the more technical small businesses that integrate virtualization into their IT environments can convert physical systems to virtual machines through Backup Exec System Recovery for disaster recovery or testing purposes.

Organizations can easily manage their backup environment at local and remote locations from a single, centralized console with Backup Exec System Recovery Management Solution, available with Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 at no additional charge. Channel partners can benefit from this feature as it provides them with complete remote control over their customers’ backup environments through a VPN connection, allowing them to create, edit and distribute backup jobs, policies, installation packages, upgrade packages and client settings and enables remote recovery of volumes and/or complete systems. In addition, the Backup Exec System Recovery product line includes editions that backup and recover Microsoft Windows Servers, Microsoft Windows Small Business Servers as well as desktops and laptops.

Click to Tweet: @Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 provides backup and recovery for small businesses across Windows and Linux

Supporting Quotes

“Small businesses today have to do more with less and are looking for simple, affordable solutions like Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 to handle their IT backup and recovery needs,” said Gene Bumgardner, Director of Technical Services, OFM Computer Systems, Inc. “Symantec’s innovative approach to backup and recovery gives us the opportunity to help our small business customers protect and manage their information and systems while allowing us to grow our business and improve services revenue.”

“As a small business and an IT consulting company, we rely on Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery to protect and manage our information and systems, as well as our clients’ systems,” said Andrew Chic, systems administrator, Prophet Business Group Ltd. “We are confident that in the event of a disaster or outage, Symantec will recover our information or complete systems within minutes so there is no disruption to our business.”

Availability and Pricing

Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 is available now for a suggested price of $795 USD per server and $69 USD per desktop. Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery Linux Edition is scheduled to be available later this year for a suggested price of $495 USD per server.

About Business Solutions from Symantec

Symantec helps organizations secure and manage their information-driven world with storage management, email archiving, backup and recovery solutions.

About Symantec

Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help consumers and organizations secure and manage their information-driven world. Our software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored. More information is available at www.symantec.com.

Note to Editors: If you would like additional information on Symantec Corporation and its products, please visit the Symantec News Room at http://www.symantec.com/news. All prices noted are in U.S. dollars and are valid only in the United States.

Symantec and the Symantec Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Forward-looking Statements: Any forward-looking indication of plans for products is preliminary and all future release dates are tentative and are subject to change. Any future release of the product or planned modifications to product capability, functionality or feature are subject to ongoing evaluation by Symantec, and may or may not be implemented and should not be considered firm commitments by Symantec and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions.

¹ Applied Research, Small and Mid-Sized Disaster Preparedness Survey, Sept. 2009