Data protection strategies have become significantly more complex in recent years. Companies that used to rely on a single-vendor tape backup solution are now using disk-based backup, tape-based archive, snapshot, replication, and a host of other strategies to cope with new business requirements and exponential data growth. Failure to manage this complex environment properly can lead to underutilized hardware, increased administration, and worse: Since regulatory compliance and legal discovery frequently require data from specific points in time, failure to produce this data can result in staggering fines and significant damage to a company’s reputation.

So what does data protection management (DPM) entail and why is it so important? It can be helpful to view DPM as a chart. Each of the areas of DPM shown on the horizontal axis can be applied to each type of data protection shown on the vertical axis of the chart.



An effective DPM solution examines the entire data protection environment, from the backup software to related elements such as tape drives, tape libraries, storage arrays, network switches, and operating systems, as well as company-specific databases/applications and business rules.


Current DPM solutions fortify the backup reporting capabilities of earlier applications by providing business-level reports and the ability to integrate backup reporting with other infrastructure components, such as asset management and billing systems.

DPM enables relatively easy identification of bottlenecks; oftentimes these bottlenecks reflect inefficient scheduling, poor media utilization, or issues that are outside of the storage domain. DPM solutions can not only report and serve as interactive optimization tools, they can also provide a mechanism to ensure that once the environment is optimized it stays that way. To function in this way, the DPM solution must have the ability to automatically discover suboptimal performance and generate alerts when it discovers inefficiencies.