Backup and Restore: Microsoft Excluded from Gartner’s Magic Quadrant

Active Directory, Azure SQL, Exchange, Hyper-V, Power Apps, Sentinel… Microsoft is ubiquitous in the latest Magic Quadrant for backup and recovery solutions.

The American group is not, however, ranked there. If Gartner mentions many of its solutions, it is only in reference to the coverage of other vendors’ offerings.

Microsoft had appeared in this Magic Quadrant in 2023 and 2024, in the “Niche Players” category. This year, its Azure Backup offering did not meet the requirements: it does not support multi-cloud environments.

12 Vendors, 6 “Leaders”

Another vendor that was ranked last year has disappeared from the radar: Veritas, absorbed by Cohesity. Huawei, on the contrary, makes its entry into this Magic Quadrant… whose title has changed: no longer “backup and recovery solutions,” but “data backup and protection platforms.” A reflection of Gartner’s stance on a “complexification of data estates,” to put it simply.

In practice, many functional criteria remained optional, although the American firm took them into account in its evaluation. Among others :

• Protection of PaaS
• BaaS offering (backup as a service)
• Disaster-recovery orchestration
• Protection of branches, endpoints or AI infrastructures
• “Enhanced” security capabilities (MFA, RBAC, PAM/SIEM/SOAR integration…)

However, it was mandatory to offer, among other things, an integration with immutable storage targets, a centralized management console and protection of at least two major SaaS.

The “execution” axis of the Magic Quadrant reflects the ability to respond effectively to demand (customer experience, pre-sales performance, quality of products/services…). The vendors position themselves as:

On the Vision axis (meant to translate strategies: sectoral, geographical, commercial, marketing, product…)

Pricing: The Bar Is High at Cohesity

Last year, Gartner credited Cohesity with strong points for its marketplace, its conversational search capability from backups and its on-demand data classification. The American analyst firm, however, pointed to limited SaaS coverage and the absence of an autonomous backup software (no offering able to place the primary copy on third-party storage). It also advised monitoring the business impact of integrating Veritas’ acquired technologies.

This year, Gartner lauds the entire product portfolio… and in particular its expansion thanks to Veritas offerings (NetBackup + Alta Data Protection). That acquisition also allowed it to extend its geographic coverage. A plus as well for incident-response services, backed by partnerships with players such as Mandiant and Palo Alto Networks.

We will remain vigilant about the pace of product development, which could slow due to the combination of Cohesity’s and Veritas’ offerings. A move that, more broadly, has created catalog duplicates. Gartner also notes higher pricing than competitors during initial negotiations. It highlights the limited recovery capabilities for cloud applications (capturing IaC deployments and configurations, in particular).

At Commvault, watch the support

Last year, Commvault stood out for its comprehensive coverage of the ecosystem and its agility in adding workload support. Gartner had also appreciated its focus on cyber-resilience (including an AI assistant and an isolated recovery environment) and the simplification of its licensing model.

The firm didn’t speak as highly of the support experience (notably the escalation process and the implementation of new features). As well as the readability of the offering, especially regarding parity between on-prem, BaaS and appliances.

This year, Commvault is again praised for its coverage of workloads, cloud in particular (IaaS and PaaS). The acquisition of Appranix has given it building blocks in this area, moving toward complete protection of the application stack. Gartner also mentions AD recovery orchestration at the forest level.

Initial configuration remains complex and it can be difficult to find the right troubleshooting documentation. On the support side, customers point to a lack of available expertise. Added to this is the transition of Commvault Command Center to a Java-based console: it isn’t finalized, leaving two tools that are not feature-parity.

Dell remains a “Follower”

Last year, Dell earned praise for the depth of its offering and the unified experience with the rest of its server/storage/network portfolio. As well as for its “direct protection” mechanism (block-level incremental backups in PowerMax and PowerStore without installing software) and the extension of usage-based pricing to PowerProtect Data Domain appliances.

Gartner had, however, labeled Dell a “follower,” notably on vaults and ransomware detection. It had also pointed to SaaS-control limitations and the risk that the focus on PowerProtect Data Manager would limit progress on Avamar and NetWorker offerings.

This year, integration with the rest of the portfolio is again praised. On two fronts. On one hand, with PowerStore and PowerMax storage. On the other, with the on-prem AI Factory offering. Gartner also adds the MDR module, which leverages the CrowdStrike Falcon XDR.

In the same vein as last year, Dell is said to lag behind on certain differentiating features. Among them, cloud application restore and some backup use cases (sensitive data detection, RAG). Also beware of administration, which can prove complex. And the need to implement multiple offerings (PowerProtect Cyber Recovery + CyberSense) to achieve comprehensive cyber-detection.

Choosing Druva Is Choosing AWS

Gartner values Druva’s ability to deliver offerings and integrations (it cites the option to back up EC2 VMs on Azure, agentless backup for Azure SQL, and optimized protection for S3 / RDS / NAS). Also positives for AI-assisted help (reporting, troubleshooting, security analyses) and ransomware defense (native managed service with no extra cost).

Beyond its reliance on AWS (upon which its management/orchestration layer rests), Druva does not offer MongoDB or Cassandra backups. Its support for PaaS services on GCP is not on par with that of the other hyperscalers.

Rubrik Still Does Not Restore Across Hypervisors

Last year, Rubrik stood out for its “competitive” pricing (both at purchase and renewals), the simplicity of its control plane, and its innovations in cyber-resilience. Gartner had also highlighted opportunities tied to the Laminar acquisition.

This year again, cyber-resilience earns Rubrik praise. Among other things, for identity protection, AI-based anomaly detection, and recovery across hybrid environments. Other positives include the Annapurna RAG solution and the Universal SaaS Application License, which includes unlimited storage for each user.

Geographic coverage remains limited outside North America and EMEA, Gartner notes. It also points to the absence of cross-hypervisor restoration (which limits DR and migration use cases) and reporting limitations.

Veeam’s Dependence on Microsoft Persists

Last year, Veeam was praised for its self-describing backup format that favors portability. Gartner had also highlighted the unprecedented know-how that the Coveware acquisition brought in incident response (including for competing offerings), forensics, and decryption.

Like Dell, Veeam appears as a “follower,” often launching its offerings in response to competitor initiatives. It also showed a lag in SaaS protection and a dependence on Windows Server for fundamental management components.

This year, Gartner commends Veeam’s market presence, both for the adoption of its solutions and for its partner network. It adds the cyber-resilience component (inline AI-based scanning, Cyber Secure support program) and the versatility of restoration (between hypervisors and directly to AWS / Azure / GCP from on-premises infrastructure).

The label of “follower” remains accurate. As does the dependence on Microsoft (Veeam Data Cloud deployment in Azure + limited flexibility to store backups with other CSPs) and the narrow scope of SaaS protection beyond Microsoft 365 / Salesforce / Entra ID.