CA Technologies today unveiled CA arcserve Unified Data Protection (UDP), an easy-to-use solution providing cost-effective backup and Assured Recovery across mixed IT environments – helping businesses boost the availability of critical systems.

CA arcserve UDP is a transformative enhancement to the CA arcserve data protection software portfolio and a uniquely compelling alternative to the cost and complexity of deploying multiple point solutions. A new unified architecture and recovery point server drive a full range of highly efficient data protection capabilities for physical and virtual environments through a simple, web-based user console. CA arcserve UDP provides more than 30 new marquee features to give businesses and service providers precise and flexible functionality to meet stringent service level and recovery objectives.

“CA arcserve UDP is the most significant release of arcserve to date. Architected from the ground up to deliver data protection simplicity, CA arcserve UDP allows businesses to reduce complexity and mitigate rising costs without sacrificing functionality. Simply put, it renders ‘point solutions’ obsolete,” said Mike Crest, general manager, Data Management, CA Technologies.

Ends Data Protection Complexity While Improving Cost & Efficiency

CA arcserve UDP is designed with ease-of-use as a fundamental requirement. A unified architecture and single web-based user interface integrate unmatched data protection for virtual and physical systems. CA arcserve UDP offers:

• Greater efficiency and quicker time-to-value with a broad spectrum of enterprise-level functionality – including image and file-based backup, tape support, replication, and high availability – in one solution
• Workflow-based Protection Plans that let users “dial in” the right level of protection within minutes.
• Five solution editions that help customers buy just the right level of protection
• Flexible pricing on a per-terabyte or per-socket basis for physical and virtual systems
• A single solution for Microsoft Windows, Linux and UNIX systems

"The concept of unified data protection brings significant value to enterprises that are struggling to meet increasingly stringent RPOs and RTOs across physical, virtual and cloud environments," said Eric Burgener, research director, Storage Practice, IDC. "Economics will drive data protection consolidation as administrators look to simplify how they handle backup, recovery, and business continuity requirements in today's heterogeneous world."

Comprehensive Functionality Replaces Limited Point Solutions

At the heart of the unified CA arcserve UDP is the new resource saving recovery point server (RPS), combining true global source-side de-duplication, integrated block-level replication, AES 256-bit level encryption, and cascading retention policies. CA arcserve UDP leverages the RPS and other technical advancements to deliver:

• Extended virtual machine protection with agent-less protection for VMware and now Microsoft Hyper-V™ environments
• Assured Recovery with local and virtual remote standby and automated, non-disruptive disaster recovery testing and reporting
• Continuous, full-system replication and high availability for near-instant recovery of an entire system – including business applications, files and data on both virtual and physical systems
• Broad support of major cloud platforms to allow easy recovery, migration or replication of complete systems, applications or data from cloud to cloud

“Organizations must easily and efficiently keep up with rapid data growth and manage a combined physical and virtual infrastructure, but specialized data protection ‘point’ solutions are often too limited in scope, and large-enterprise solutions can be too unwieldy for many smaller businesses,” said David Fartouk, Founder and CTO at Trust-IT Solutions, a provider of value-added services in IT infrastructure, storage, backup and disaster recovery planning based in Israel. “During testing, we were particularly impressed by CA arcserve UDP’s centralized control and task planning, its resource-saving deduplication and compression, and its overall performance – all packaged in a solution that is really unique to the market.”

Extends Business Opportunities for Service Providers

CA arcserve UDP is sold exclusively through a reseller channel and ideally suited to MSPs building or adding disaster recovery and business continuity to their offerings. It features:

• Documented APIs to ease integration with third-party platforms
• JumpStart data seeding to accelerate protection at remote sites
• MSP-designed reporting
• Specialized licensing programs and resources on the MSP Zone website that speed time-to-value

“To meet the needs of our growing and increasingly demanding customer base, speed and manageability are more important than ever when it comes to handling our clients’ backups.” said Gary Haberl, President of Lions Park Computers Ltd., a full-service network administration company based in Calgary, Alberta. “Building on the strengths of its heritage, CA ARCserve UDP delivers on those requirements, proving to be extremely quick and easy to deploy while providing a fast recovery method to get our clients back to work quickly.”