Showing Some Backbone

Updating your infrastructure is often as noticeable and exciting to the outside world as getting a new roof on your house. You know it's there--and you know how much it cost--but it hardly improves your overall curb appeal. Still, we shell out good money for these mostly invisible repairs, knowing that a leak at the top can mean trouble everywhere else.

And so it is with systems and network infrastructure--that lifeblood of enterprises of all sizes. For these underpinnings of business, which connect all parts of the organization both internally and externally, finding the best products may seem utilitarian and dull. But like a good roof, a solid foundation or water and septic upgrades, these are the kinds of spartan expenses that can keep a business' trouble at bay for years to come.

When it came to judging this year's deep cadre of products in the infrastructure categories of Servers, Storage, Wireless Networking and combined Voice & Data Networking, the VARBusiness 2006 Technology Innovation judges looked for gear that was noteworthy largely for its differentiation from other products.

And those differences carried over to the categories themselves. Consider storage. Seldom will an IT product come along that not only contains enough "wow factor" to impress a jaded enterprise CIO but would also make a great stocking stuffer for Grandma. Yet that's exactly the case with IBM's CDP For Files.

"I think it's the first and only product in IBM's history that was meant for any consumer of any kind [as well as for enterprises]," says Chris Stakutis, inventor of the product and a director of worldwide sales at IBM.

Stakutis admits he didn't have the masses in mind when he brought the software to market last year. Rather, it was intended to fill a hole in IBM's Tivoli enterprise systems-management suite.

At its core, CDP For Files provides continuous data protection for any file-based data on a PC. It effectively takes a snapshot of all the data on a system every time there's a change to a document. The data is then backed up and versioned, allowing an individual to revert to a former point in time if there's a system failure.

Also, CDP For Files automatically backs up those snapshots to a server or external drive so that the data can be recovered if the system fails, or if it's lost or stolen.

Once the software is configured, the user doesn't have to do anything--a key issue when it comes to backup and recovery. "The reason people don't back up is because they think it's a pain in the a--," Stakutis says. "They expect it to be part of the system."

After rolling it out to enterprises and, later, SMB customers, many requested licenses to take home to their families. "It's been overwhelming," Stakutis says. "We designed the product for the average end user in corporate America, but it turns out it was suitable for any end user anywhere."

Some VARs that aren't IBM business partners are deploying the software for their customers. Broadleaf, for example, a managed-service provider in Burlington, Mass., runs CDP For Files on its clients' PCs and links the backup servers to his data center. "This product just works," says James Tenner, Broadleaf's CEO.

Stakutis is passionate about this product, and his goal is to make backup as ubiquitous as antivirus software.

"I don't know anyone who doesn't run antivirus software today," he says. "In a few years from now, it will be the same with backup."

NEXT: Server and wireless winners