Symantec Declares Better Backup for All Sized Organisations in Malaysia and Calls for 80 Percent Reduction in Operating Costs

Mesiniaga, Infowhiz Solutions,CHASSasia and other Malaysian business partners join hands in the announcement of Backup Exec 2012 and NetBackup 7.5

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Mar. 1, 2012– Symantec in Malaysia today announced it will deliver a new approach for modernising backup and recovery, a process that has become unnecessarily complicated and expensive as organisations’ data stores grow exponentially. Compared to traditional backup, Symantec’s approach enables 100 times faster backup, eases management and simplifies recovery if a disaster occurs, helping customers realize significant cost savings while better protecting their business information.

In-line with the approach for data protection, Symantec announced two new products – NetBackup 7.5 and Backup Exec 2012 – in Kuala Lumpur today together with Mesiniaga Berhad, Infowhiz Solutions (M) Sdn Bhd, CHASSasia (M) Sdn Bhd, and other local business partners to help small and midsized businesses (SMBs) and large enterprise organisations overcome their data protection challenges.

“While information volumes are skyrocketing, the IT budgets of many organisations in Malaysia are not keeping pace. In fact, in many cases the budgets may be shrinking. The on-demand requirements and round the clock business model today also means users want instant access to their data and applications. Organisations are under tremendous pressure to protect more information with fewer resources, while meeting tighter SLAs,” said Alex Ong, senior country manager, Symantec Malaysia.

“Today, Symantec unveils a radical new plan to modernize data protection that will drive out 80 percent of the operating costs associated with backup over the next five years. We are committed to helping our customers in Malaysia achieve better backup with an integrated approach that will significantly reduce the cost and complexity associated with backup and recovery,” added Ong.

Backup Challenges

Over the last 20 years data has exploded, virtualisation has become widely adopted and service level agreements (SLA’s) have become near impossible to meet. These challenges also affect the smaller businesses that struggle with backup complexity and are at risk of data loss due to a disaster. The current approach to modernization introduces an ever-growing collection of point solutions resulting in added complexity, increased costs and headaches for backup administrators, network administrators and executives.

“The single most dramatic change is scale – or volume – of data, applications and virtual machines which cannot be processed by current backup environments. Organisations have increased service level agreements, rising expectations of availability and the need to run in a 24/7 business model. When combined with trying to integrate new technologies, it adds up to a disruptive environment with a huge impact on IT teams. Organisations small and large need a holistic protection strategy, a single platform or solution, to handle the variety of data types and workloads as opposed to integrating a number of disparate point solutions, which proves to be costly and time consuming,” said Dave Russell, vice president of Storage Technologies and Strategies, Gartner.

Symantec recently surveyed more than 1,400 IT professionals worldwide on their backup practices and their ability to recover information in the event of a disaster. The findings reveal that traditional approaches to backup are broken and a new approach is vitally needed:

· 49 percent of respondents can’t meet service level agreements (SLA’s) due to too much data

· 72 percent of respondents would switch backup product if speed doubled

· 28 percent say they have too many backup tools

· Organisations average four backup solutions to protect physical systems, and three for virtual

· 42 percent of respondents believe that their virtualisation backup is not adequately or perfectly working

· More than a third (36 percent) of respondents would not bet their paychecks that 100 percent of backed-up data could be recovered

According to the Malaysia findings of Symantec’s 2011 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey, SMBs are not making disaster preparedness a priority until they experience a disaster or data loss. Fifty-nine percent of respondents from Malaysia do not have a plan in place and 29 percent said that it never occurred to them to put together a disaster recovery plan. The survey data reveals that the cost of not being prepared is high, putting an SMB at risk of going out of business.

Key components to Symantec’s unique approach to data protection are the NetBackup 7.5 and Backup Exec 2012, designed to help Symantec’s more than two million backup customers worldwide address backup issues common to companies all over the world.

“Organisations of all sizes – from large enterprises to small businesses need a solution that addresses their issues holistically. Symantec is announcing a new set of solutions that address the problems in backup – from the most complex of enterprise data centers requiring a true tiered-recovery strategy to the smallest business that needs the confidence that they can easily recover their data,” said Raymond Goh, Symantec’s regional technical director for Asia South Region, Systems Engineering and Customer Advisory Services.

Backup Exec 2012: Dedicated to 100 Percent Virtual Environments and Expands Data Protection for Small Businesses

Backup Exec 2012 help users eliminate complexity, perform backups in 100 percent virtualised environments and deliver instantaneous and cloud-based recovery through a single solution. As part of the new release, Symantec transformed Backup Exec’s user interface and configurability to provide a significantly simpler customer experience. Symantec is also expanding its leading technology to small businesses with Backup Exec Small Business Edition, enabling growing organisations to back up their information in three simple steps in less than 10 minutes.

Backup Exec Portfolio Now Includes:
Backup Exec V-Ray Edition: Backup Exec V-Ray Edition will give virtualisation architects the option of having industry leading Backup Exec technology protect their 100 percent virtualised environment and the option to easily extend protection to physical environments, if needed, without having to buy a separate solution.

Backup Exec Small Business Edition: In three simple steps, Backup Exec 2012 Small Business Edition will install and configure backups so small businesses with limited IT experience can protect their data with ease. Backup Exec Small Business Edition will bundle Symantec’s data and system recovery technology into one affordable solution with a single license that’s designed specifically for businesses with up to three servers.


NetBackup 7.5: Ends the Backup Window with 100 Times Faster Backups

Symantec is delivering a new approach to data protection and introducing NetBackup 7.5 with new options, including NetBackup Accelerator to speed backups by up to 100 times while delivering “Instant Full Recovery” capability, NetBackup Replication Director to integrate NetApp® Snapshots™ with backup, and NetBackup Search to allow simple search and recovery of backup data and selective legal hold. Unlike other backup technology that relies on the IT team to integrate multiple disparate backup solutions, NetBackup is available as a single integrated appliance for the data center, remote office and virtual environments, providing customers with simplified deployment and operations.

Symantec is also announcing an expanded partnership with NetApp to integrate with NetBackup Replication Director, enabling customers to unify Snapshot and backup management, and remove the cost and risk associated with multiple backup and recovery tools. Replication Director enables organisations to reduce costs and complexity by recovering and managing backup and replicated Snapshots from a single, NetBackup management console.

Availability
Symantec Backup Exec 2012 and NetBackup 7.5 will be generally available for purchase by mid-year 2012 in Malaysia through Symantec’s network of value-added authorized resellers, distributors and systems integrators or directly.


Opportunities for Malaysian Business Partners

Symantec will be working closely with its business partners in Malaysia in offering the new products to the Malaysian market. The availability of Backup Exec 2012 and NetBackup 7.5 will enable Symantec partners in Malaysia to be at the forefront in leveraging opportunities in the data protection market. “Our partners with Data Protection Specialisation have the skills and knowledge to be actively involved in improving their customers’ backup and information strategy,” said Ong.

Commenting on the local availability of the products, Wong Keng Hoe, Mesiniaga Berhad’s director of Project Management and Solutions Marketing said, "Our customers in Malaysia are facing challenges in exponential data growth and increasing demand for more efficient backup performance. Symantec’s NetBackup 7.5 launch is timely in meeting these challenges, especially in simplifying multiple backup platforms on a single solution. As Symantec’s Platinum Partner, Mesiniaga’s long term partnership with Symantec enables us to be at the forefront of the storage and backup market, providing value driven, world-class backup solutions to our customers. In addition, achieving the Symantec Data Protection Specialisation equips our dedicated team with strong skills and knowledge to work with organisations in strengthening their backup strategy and to execute their backup plan effectively."



Joining Symantec at the press launch, Soo Chong Teck, general manager of Infowhiz Solutions (M) Sdn Bhd said, “Infowhiz has an experienced team that has comprehensive experiences in data protection and disaster recovery. With our close partnership with Symantec and having achieved Symantec certifications in Data Protection Specialisation and Master Specialisation, we are skilled to provide enterprise organizations in Malaysia the solutions and consultancy services they required. Having seen the latest NetBackup 7.5, we are excited to work with Symantec in bringing it to market, the best-selling points of the product is the NetBackup Accelerator with 100 times faster backup, and the V-Ray technology that allows backup across physical and virtual environments from a single solution.”

Yun Ta Ming, CEO of CHASSasia Group added, “CHASSasia has been implementing and supporting Backup Exec customers for many years and we’ve seen the capability of the product grown over the years in meeting customer demands. The current Symantec Backup Exec 2012 is a mature product and is the best backup and recovery software for physical and virtual environments. CHASSasia has vast experience in helping our customers in their backup strategy and requirements, having achieved Symantec Data Protection Specialisation, we have the right skills and knowledge to address customer’s needs in this area.”