Bocada Attempts to Move Enterprise Users to Prism

Bocada has unveiled a new version of its flagship software and put together a multi-phased migration program in an effort to move its customers from Bocada Enterprise to the Bocada Prism backup reporting platform.

Referred to as the “high performance version” of Prism, R2 includes enhanced trending functions and renders information on large data sets faster than its predecessor.

Bocada Prism R2 includes five new trending reports that the company claims will help users better understand data protection activity and identify areas where their backup policies can be improved.

Prism R2 allows users to view the amount of data being backed up during a given time period, compare static backup windows with backup duration trends, and analyze the impact of backup trends on media volumes over time.

It can also show storage changes over time, and includes error count trending, helping to identify chronic problems and pinpoint which error types are the worst offenders.

Aimed at backup service providers, managed service providers (MSPs), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendors, and large organizations, Prism R2 supports a range of backup applications, including IBM TSM, Symantec NetBackup, BackupExec, PureDisk, EMC Networker, Avamar, HP DataProtector, CA BrightStor, Commvault Galaxy, Syncsort, and Microsoft DPM 2010.

Bocada has made a concerted effort to move about 350 Bocada Enterprise customers to Prism since the product’s debut earlier this year.

The Bocada migration packages – which are initially being aimed at about 150 of its smaller customers – include new Prism licenses and professional services for migration assessment, validation, installation and hands-on training.

As part of the migration process, Bocada analyzes the environment to determine migration requirements, tests the migration to make sure all database updates and collections perform as expected, and moves the customer over to Prism. Bocada also provides hands-on training as part of the process.

The move from Bocada Enterprise to Bocada Prism is more than just a product upgrade. It’s a shift from backup reporting to a newer concept that Bocada calls Data Protection Service Management (DPSM) . DPSM is an ITSM-like methodology that uses a multi-phased approach to assess the overall effectiveness of a data protection delivery infrastructure, according to the company.

Nancy Hurley, CEO of Bocada, said migration packages vary in cost from $10,000 on the low end, to $50,000 for larger customers. She added that the evaluation and validation processes can take up to two weeks, while the Prism installation and training is done around the customer’s schedule.

Bocada is in the process of training a handful of channel partners to take on some of the migration projects, but, Hurley said, the “queue is filling up, so customers who want to migrate to Prism should sign up now.”

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