There is an old adage that no two snowflakes look alike. Apparently, the same can be said for comparable editions of backup software as well. For instance, we recently observed that there seems to be two different versions of “Free” out there. Cutting to the chase, when Vembu says free, we mean the whole enchilada. But when Veeam says free, they seem to mean something close to nada. We think its time to put this out there, call a spade a spade and then let everyone else decide freely which is which and who is who.
The ultimate goal of any good backup software is to protect the business needs of small and medium enterprises by ensuring the recoverability of systems, applications and data on all their physical and virtual environments now and in the future. If you ignore the shrill of marketing noise and simply focus on the raw substance, Vembu emerges as the best product hands down that will help meet those tough objectives for SMBs when compared to Veeam or any other backup provider for that matter. A good place to start is to compare the free edition of Vembu with that of Veeam.
Veeam had released a free backup software tool for Windows desktops and laptops a while ago and it gained some buzz in the BDR community.
What do you get with Veeam’s much ado about nothing edition?
(1) OK catch this. Basically, Veeam offers a rather trivial and bare-bones data protection mechanism for end points. By end points we mean systems that have some data on them but which are outside the purview of the all-important data center. So what falls in this tiny circle is PCs, workstations and laptops that are being utilized by end users. Freebies for end users and nothing for IT admins.
(2) As if that wasn’t limiting enough, they meant it to work only on Windows-based computers (desktops & laptops) running Windows 7 and higher as well as Windows Server 2008 and higher
(3) The real damper is that it is just a standalone product and is not part of Veeam Backup & Replication nor the Veeam Availability Suite. So at best, its a playtoy in your sparetime.
(4) In case you even thought about it, just forget about the upgrades to business grade data protection with centralized management and monitoring.
(5) And of course, no public cloud support either. I know what you are thinking. “FREE” isn’t what it used to be.
So, there you have it. Now that you have seen it all without the marketing fluff around Veeam Free to do nothing for IT admins edition, lets move on to the Vembu Free edition and check out why it’s the real deal.
What do you, the SMB IT Admin, get from our definition of “FREE” edition?
1) We offer you a highly sophisticated business grade comprehensive backup and disaster recovery solution which actually works across all major OS environments (Windows, Linux and Mac) of servers, desktops and laptops.
2) Vembu has your back all the way. We cover your end points free. We backup your physical servers free. We can do disk image backups for free. We can do all your application backups like exchange server, sql server , sharepoint etc. for FREE as well.
3) Our BDR product is locked and loaded in terms of technology and you can avail awesome capabilities like application aware backups, granular recovery, deduplication and point-in-time instant recovery, public cloud support to just count a few. The score is pitiable for Veeam on this count.
4) FREE goes real far out here since we bundled our free product with also completely free 24 x 7 support. We know that support is always crucial for customers and so we don’t try to cheapskate you like others who offer only very basic support (good example: Veeam).
5) We don’t ever leave you standing alone. Ours is not a standalone product that doesn’t integrate or upgrade to a commercially viable version meant for all environments. With our free and commercial versions, you can instantly and universally backup everything from your end points to physical server to VMware and Hyper-V along with a plethora of applications with a single unified deployment. No half-baked offerings like that of veeam that forces you to trigger multiple deployments and gives away nightmares for free.
6) Vembu has been commercially offering end point and physical server backups for at least 8 years and it has generated millions in revenue for us. And now we are giving a fully equipped product free so that our VMWare and Hyper-V customers can derive additional value by choosing Vembu. Our FREE Products are not an after thought. It was our bread & butter for so long and we are making it free for you.
Actually when it comes down to it, you can see that there is no comparison at all since Veeam doesn’t even stand up on the same ground that Vembu does. You are right if you imagined that we are gifting you with a free product that was minting millions in revenue for us in terms of protecting physical server environments of SMBs and doing a good job at it.
But why did we do it ? So that we can redefine what FREE should mean to our valued customers and give them what they truly deserve for data protection.
Find out more by clicking here.
