Symantec Backup Exec, NetBackup Customers Benefit From ExaGrid's Disk-Based Backup Solution And Test-Certified Compatibility

Westborough, MA — ExaGrid Systems, Inc. has announced that it is a Symantec Technology Enabled Partner delivering proven interoperable solutions for Symantec Backup Exec (9.1, 10.0, 10D and 11D) and Veritas NetBackup (5.1 and 6.0). The combination of Symantec's two industry-leading backup applications and ExaGrid's turnkey disk-based backup solution with 2X compression and advanced byte-level data deduplication technology enables customers to significantly reduce costs, shrink their backup window, improve recovery times and easily protect more data in a substantially smaller storage footprint.

"Cost and ease-of-migration often stall a customer's move from tape to disk for their backups," said Pat Hanavan, vice president of product management, Symantec. "We're pleased that companies like ExaGrid Systems are working with us to make that transition not only a good business decision but one that quickly makes the IT professional's life easier."

"Many of our customers choose Symantec's backup applications. As companies begin to evaluate the advantages of integrating and/or migrating to disk, they also need to feel confident that their disk-based backup solution functions seamlessly with their backup application," said Bill Andrews, president and CEO of ExaGrid Systems, Inc. "We are pleased to be working closely with Symantec to help customers make the move easy and cost effective."

Many companies already use the combination of Symantec backup applications and the ExaGrid system for cost-effective disk-based backup. Examples include the following:

• American National Bank and Trust Company
  Established in 1909, American National Bank and Trust Company provides community banking services in the south central Virginia area. The IT department at American National Bank and Trust Company had always backed up the bank's corporate data to tape, but was frustrated by tape's inherent lack of reliability and the fact that the bank's nightly backup window had grown to 12 hours. Using Symantec Backup Exec and the ExaGrid system, American National Bank and Trust Company's backups have run smoothly, and its backup window has been cut in half.

• Taco, Inc.
  Taco, Inc., a leader in the home heating and cooling industry, initially needed a system to cut their backup window, which was taking over 46 hours and allowed no room for unforeseen problems. By implementing the ExaGrid system with their existing Symantec Backup Exec software, Taco cut their backup window down to just 16 hours. In addition, recovery dramatically improved, particularly for any data over 15 days old that previously had only been stored on tape. Taco has also implemented a second ExaGrid system off-site for automated disaster backup, ensuring more reliability and currency of information versus their previous means of shipping tapes to an off-site facility.

• St. Mary's Regional Medical Center
  This 233-bed acute care facility serving Maine's Adroscoggin County uses Symantec's Backup Exec to perform its nightly backups. The management complexity and amount of manual effort working with tape backups, which was surpassing 13 hour backup windows each night, required a change. St. Mary's chose to exchange multiple servers and different tape storage devices for ExaGrid System's cost effective disk-based backup solution. With ExaGrid, St. Mary's is experiencing 50 to 1 data reduction and has cut its backup window by more than half.