IDC MARKET SPOTLIGHT

Sponsored by: Dell Technologies

Purpose-built backup appliances add reliability and speed to backup and restore
operations. They remain as relevant in a cloud environment as they always have for
on-premises operations and are increasing in importance for ransomware protection
and recovery.

Purpose-Built Backup Appliances:

2020 Market Results
April 2021

Written by: Phil Goodwin, Research Director, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms, and Technologies Group

Introduction AT A GLANCE
Purpose-built backup appliances (PBBAs) have been foundational
components to many organizations' backup/recovery infrastructure for
KEY STAT
more than a decade. The importance of PBBAs is illustrated in the The PBBA market reached $4.33 billion in
numbers: According to IDC, in 2020, the data replication and protection 2020, up 1.5% from 2019, according to IDC.
(DR&P) market was approximately $9.2 billion, while the PBBA market was
$4.33 billion, up from $4.27 billion in 2019. The PBBA market WHAT'S IMPORTANT
PBBA devices are evolving to address hybrid
demonstrated remarkable resilience in a year that proved to be very data protection requirements with faster
difficult for many technology sectors and markets. data restoration and secondary use cases
such as thwarting ransomware attacks.
Despite its size, the PBBA market is relatively specialized and has a limited
number of participants. Currently, IDC tracks 10 "named" vendors and several
smaller participants in the "other" category. The PBBA market was pioneered more than 15 years ago; IDC has been tracking
this market since 2010.
PBBAs have several distinguishing characteristics from other appliance devices and general-purpose storage arrays.
These characteristics are:
» Being able to specifically store backup data sets in the format of the backup software, making it impractical to use
the data for other purposes but ideal as a backup target alternative to tape
» Implementing high rates of data deduplication (usually 10:1 and as high as 65:1) that make it impractical to use the
data for tasks other than data restore but ideal for effectively low $/GB backup retention
» Enabling highly efficient data replication (largely due to data deduplication) to facilitate rapid backup from remote offices
» Providing protocol translation (e.g., S3, OpenStack) for data transfer to cloud repositories ("cloud tiering")
» Protecting against ransomware attacks and rapidly recovering from them by separating the control plane and the
data plane with an "air gap" when properly configured and deployed with encryption and immutability
PBBAs have become a cornerstone data protection technology for many organizations that are seeking to optimize and
simplify backup and restore operations.
IDC MARKET SPOTLIGHT Purpose-Built Backup Appliances: 2020 Market Results

Definitions
For the purposes of this market discussion, IDC identifies the following subsegments of the PBBA market:

» Target device: Target PBBAs are disk arrays with specific functionality (i.e., deduplication, encryption) to house and
manage backup data sets. Target devices do not include their own backup software and are intended to work with a
wide variety of third-party backup applications.

» Integrated device: Integrated devices are like target devices in configuration and capability, with the addition of
installed and bundled backup software.
Despite our attention to these market distinctions for classification purposes, many IT organizations simply view PBBA
alternatives based on which system has the desired functionality and convenience of deployment.
It is important to distinguish PBBAs from cloud gateway devices. Although both devices may provide protocol translation
and transfer of data from on-premises to the cloud, cloud gateway devices are intended to store data for only short
periods of time (primarily as a data transfer buffer). PBBAs are designed to retain data throughout the life of the data
backup and facilitate rapid data restore.

Benefits
PBBAs solve several challenges associated with backup. The two primary issues solved are summarized as follows:

» Backstopping unreliable tape media and hardware: Tape hardware, highly mechanical in nature, tends to be more
error prone than disk arrays. Moreover, tape media can be lost, stolen, or broken or have unrecoverable errors.
Thus, organizations turn to PBBAs as a primary backup target to reduce backup and restore failures caused by
tape-related problems.

» Speeding up data restore: As random-access devices, PBBAs can restore individual files very rapidly compared with
the time needed to load, mount, search, and stream a tape. This is especially true if the tape has been moved offsite,
where the recall process can be hours or days.

» Ransomware protection: Bad actors deploying ransomware have learned to target backup data first so that
subsequent attacks on primary data cannot be recovered through backup and thereby force ransom payment.
PBBAs can be instrumental in defeating these attacks by protecting backup data through layers of "air gap"
(i.e., eliminating a physical connection to the backup that hackers can exploit), data encryption, immutable copies of
backup data that cannot be changed by hackers, and access control methods to prevent in-house attacks.
Of course, PBBAs and tape are not mutually exclusive. Many organizations will write one copy of the backup to a PBBA
and a second copy to tape, known as disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T). This method offers the advantage of rapid onsite data
restore using the PBBA and the safety of tape offsite storage for disaster recovery (DR) or assured data survival; this
process may be done either serially or in parallel. More recently, organizations have begun copying data to the cloud in a
disk-to-disk-to-cloud (D2D2C) architecture. This approach offers the same data management benefits as D2D2T but can
eliminate the need to handle tapes altogether.

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IDC MARKET SPOTLIGHT Purpose-Built Backup Appliances: 2020 Market Results

When selecting a PBBA system, IT buyers must make a choice between a target device and an integrated device. Target
devices can be used with almost any current backup/recovery software, and as such, they can be added to an existing
environment seamlessly. Organizations wishing to use their existing backup software will likely choose a target device.
Integrated devices have the backup/recovery software pre-installed on the appliance, so the deployment is rapid and
simple. Organizations seeking the simplest implementation will likely choose an integrated appliance. The practical
benefits of both systems are identical; it is a matter of deployment preference.

Considerations
The primary shortcoming of PBBAs is that they really serve only one purpose, which is backup/recovery. Because the
data is highly deduplicated (i.e., data fragments spread across many blocks) and often stored in the proprietary format of
the backup software, the data stores are not available for additional uses such as analytics. In addition, the time needed
to "rehydrate" data (i.e., reassemble it from fragmented blocks into complete blocks) may impact restore times.
Fortunately, the industry is responding by adding flash storage and different architectural elements to speed data
restores as well as opening up the data to secondary use cases.

Trends
The total worldwide value of the PBBA market in 2020 was $4.33 billion. Figure 1 shows total market value from 2016
through 2020. This value includes target and integrated devices, encompassing both hardware and software included
with the devices.

FIGURE 1: Total Worldwide PBBA Market Size in Revenue, 2016–2020

4,500

4,000

3,500

3,000

2,500
($M)

2,000

1,500

1,000

500

0
2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
Source: IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Purpose-Built Backup Appliance Tracker, March 2021

Figure 1 illustrates an overall trend of steady growth for the PBBA market over time. When looking at the target and
integrated market segments separately, we forecast -1.2% growth for target devices and 2.6% growth for integrated
devices in 2021. Currently, target devices constitute approximately two-thirds of the overall market compared with
one-third for integrated devices.

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IDC MARKET SPOTLIGHT Purpose-Built Backup Appliances: 2020 Market Results

In terms of vendor market share, Figure 2 illustrates the share of the top 5 market participants by revenue in 2020.
These market share figures are for the total market, including both target and integrated devices.

FIGURE 2: Market Share of Top 5 PBBA Vendors Plus Other: Full-Year 2020 Results
PBBA Vendor Share by Revenue, 2020

Dell Technologies Vendor 2 Vendor 3 Vendor 4 Vendor 5 Other

Source: IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Purpose-Built Backup Appliance Tracker, March 2021

For the full-year results in 2020, Dell Technologies enjoyed a 47% market share, which includes target and integrated
devices plus associated software. Dell Technologies has been the market leader by revenue for as long as IDC has been
tracking the market. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the PBBA market showed remarkable resilience in 2020.

Conclusion
PBBAs provide IT organizations with a solution to common problems associated with
backup/recovery operations as well as improve service-level delivery for data restore PBBAs remain
and availability.
relevant in cloud
At $4.33 billion in revenue value, PBBAs represent about one-third of the total spent by environments by
IT organizations on backup/recovery hardware and software infrastructure (this does providing rapid
not include the amount spent on tape infrastructure, which IDC estimates to be less
than $1 billion).
on-premises restore
and data replication
Although PBBAs were originally designed to solve tape-related problems, they remain to the cloud as well
relevant in cloud environments by providing rapid on-premises restore and data
replication to the cloud as well as ransomware protection. Throughout the history of the
as ransomware
market, Dell Technologies, with help from EMC's acquisition of Data Domain, has been protection.
the market leader. Currently, Dell Technologies has more than twice the market share of
its next nearest competitor in this market.

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IDC MARKET SPOTLIGHT Purpose-Built Backup Appliances: 2020 Market Results

About the Analyst

Phil Goodwin, Research Director, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms, and
Technologies Group
Phil Goodwin is a Research Director within IDC's Enterprise Infrastructure practice, covering research on data
management. Mr. Goodwin provides detailed insight and analysis on evolving industry trends, vendor
performance, and the impact of new technology adoption. He is responsible for producing and delivering
timely, in-depth market research with a specific focus on cloud-based and on-premises data protection,
business continuity and disaster recovery, and data availability.

MESSAGE FROM THE SPONSOR

Dell EMC Data Protection Appliances
Dell Technologies offers a complete portfolio of Purpose-Built Backup Appliances, including both Target, Software
Defined and Integrated models
Learn more at https://www.delltechnologies.com/en-us/data-protection/powerprotect-backup-appliances.htm
Target Appliances
Dell EMC PowerProtect DD series. The next generation of Data Domain backup appliances delivering enterprise
performance, efficiency, scale, and cloud support. High performance protection storage appliances in models from
4TB to 1.5 PB of usable capacity supporting a variety of access methods and software applications that can be used for
both backup and archive. PowerProtect DD series appliances include cloud tiering for long term retention to public,
private and hybrid clouds. PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition provides software defined data protection up to 96TB on-
premises and up to 256TB in the public cloud.
Integrated Appliances
Dell EMC PowerProtect DP series. Simple, powerful cloud enabled integrated data protection appliances for small,
mid-size and enterprise organizations. Starting at 8TB, the PowerProtect DP series offers complete backup, replication,
recovery, deduplication, instant access, and restore, search and analytics and tight VMware integration — plus, cloud
readiness with disaster recovery and long-term retention to the cloud.

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IDC MARKET SPOTLIGHT Purpose-Built Backup Appliances: 2020 Market Results

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