Symantec updates archiving and deduplication products

Symantec has updated its Enterprise Vault archiving product to offer better support for hosted systems, and has unveiled its NetBackup 5000 deduplication appliance, which the security firm said could reduce storage requirements by up to 50 times.

With the releases, Symantec hopes to alleviate many of the problems that the modern enterprise faces. For example, it is hoping to appeal to those firms that want a mix of cloud and on-premise systems, and those that need to ensure short term access and long term recovery on their documents.

Enterprise Vault 9.0 and Enterprise Vault Discovery Collector will let firms make sense of unmanaged and unarchived information, whether held on desktops or laptops, according to Symantec.

For compliance and e-discovery purposes, the update should remove the problems associated with duplicated messages and let administrators confidently delete documents that are already replicated.

Improvements to the Enterprise Vault product include its support for Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite and Exchange Online, which Symantec said would let firms combine hosted email with on-premise archival.

Sharon White, product marketing manager at Symantec, said that the products have been designed to be easy to use and simple to install. She added that they would help firms balance their in-house and hosted applications, and create harmonised data control across them.

“We want to support organisations as they embrace the cloud, but we recognise that it is about ensuring data consistency,” White explained.

The NetBackup 5000 appliance is designed to help firms reduce their document load. Symantec said that firms could reduce their storage requirements by as much as 50 times, while lessening their bandwidth consumption by up to 99 per cent.

Although not sold as a package, this appliance is complementary to Symantec’s other releases, according to Martin Warren, senior product marketing manager at the firm. “There is a combined story here,” he said, “Together they make it easier to archive what is important and make it easier to find.”

He added that the appliance comes with onboard software and was designed to work out of the box. Symantec has also partnered with cloud provider Nirvanix to offer the appliance in a hosted option, with backup and recovery tools.