Symantec simplifies backup and recovery to help small businesses protect against downtime

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.

Prajit Arakkal, mid market & regional distribution sales manager for Mena, Symantec, said:

"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. 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 survey 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%), 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.

"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."