CA updates backup software

Addressing the pain points of storage administrators, namely shrunken budgets, fewer staff, and too many backup applications, Computer Associates (CA) on Tuesday introduced version 10.5 of its backup and recovery software, BrightStor Enterprise Backup.

Version 10.5, which became generally available last week, has improved integration with existing CA products and now comes standard with the company's BrightStor Portal technology, said Ed Cooper, CA product marketing manager for BrightStor Enterprise Backup.

Tighter integration with products such as BrightStor ARCserve Backup, BrightStor Storage Resource Manager, eTrust Antivirus and Unicenter is something the company will continue to do, Cooper said.

"Integration among our products is a big theme going forward," said Cooper. "We'll continue to put emphasis on cross-product integration."

Islandia, NY-based CA said the software can now schedule back-ups within BrightStor ARCserve Backup -- the company's other backup application -- and that it will manage third-party software from its competitors Legato and Veritas via the addition of BrightStor Portal.

Cooper added that integration with CA's eTrust security products means Enterprise Backup can help a company meet the requirements of recently imposed government regulations for saving data. This, he says, is done via a set of wizards and templates that provide what he and the industry call auto provisioning, in which rules are set up before a pre-built engine runs those rules against the data.

CA will offer the upgrade free to existing customers and says eight of its 70 beta customers already have the software running in a production mode.

Version 10.5 is priced between $4,000 and $25,000, depending on the server running the software. The agents that provide integration between CA's other software products are priced from $300 to $10,000, said Cooper.