UltraBac Software

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August 19, 2013 Issue

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With Specialized Agents for vSphere, Hyper-V and VMware & Microsoft Virtual Disk, UltraBac Software is providing Backup and Disaster Recovery for Data Protection across Multiple Platforms

About UltraBac Software

www.ultrabac.com

UltraBac Software is based in Bellevue, Washington and has been an innovator in designing high performance and sophisticated utility software for over 30 years. The privately held corporation has been specializing exclusively in storage management software since 1989, and has been focused primarily on backup and recovery solutions for Microsoft® Windows® based networks since 1995. As a technology leader, UltraBac Software has compiled a long list of firsts and has squarely positioned itself as a premier solution provider for users who demand the very best in protection for their mission-critical data. UltraBac solutions are scalable from small to large organizations, and cater to a wide array of diverse business computing environments.

 

UltraBac Software has been a recipient of Deloitte & Touche’s Technology Fast 500 and Washington State Technology Fast 50 Awards, and Puget Sound Business Journal’s list of fastest growing private companies. The company has also been recognized on Software Magazine’s list of the top 500 largest software companies for the past fifteen years.

 

Products

The company’s premier software products are UltraBac and UBDR Gold. UltraBac is a file-by-file backup solution offering users a complete set of backup, restore, and scheduling options. UBDR Gold is an image-based disaster recovery solution with every conceivable option to perform full "bare metal" restores of failed servers at speeds of up to 6GB per minute. UltraBac Software solutions support backups and recoveries to dissimilar media of practically any type, including virtual machines. Optional agents for Exchange, SQL, MySQL, Oracle, FTP, Tivoli, Linux, Locked Files, vSphere, Hyper-V, and Virtual Disk extend the functionality of both solutions.

 

UltraBac Warp was introduced to the market in January of 2013. The backup and disaster recovery software provides a comprehensive form of Continuous Data Protection (CDP) designed for end users with minimal technical experience. UltraBac Warp's CDP is distinctive in that it is image based and has been uniquely identified as Continuous Image Protection™ (CIP™). With CIP, all selected volumes are automatically protected as opposed to only certain files or folders. CIP uses changed block tracking where only changed blocks are saved, thereby protecting all files on partitions selected for backup. This greatly reduces the amount of backup storage space used by eliminating the need to save an entire file every time a change is made. Furthermore, UltraBac Warp also provides image-based bare metal disaster recovery capability, even to dissimilar hardware. The software is simple to install and, with an easy three step backup and restore process, literally anyone can be their own backup administrator.

 

Innovative Backup and Disaster Recovery

UltraBac Software’s backup and recovery technology has proven to be the best solution for thousands of customers. UltraBac solutions meet the needs and exceed the expectations of company of all sizes that demand dependable file-by-file backups and comprehensive image- based backups. UltraBac Software develops and owns all of the technology incorporated in the company’s award-winning solutions.

 

Product innovation and development based on market need, have guided the development of UltraBac solutions from day one. The company has out-thought and out-innovated many large publicly held companies with a long list of ‘firsts.’

 

Industry first innovations include the ability to perform virtual-based disaster recoveries for the Windows platform, writing directly to a VMDK file, as well as integrating FTP into disaster recovery. UltraBac Software was among the first of any company to incorporate image-based backups as a key technology in recovering a failed computer. Customers also have the unique option of recovering a failed server from a single USB key to have their data restored in a matter of minutes. These innovations, and many more, have made UltraBac Software a leader in backup and recovery.

Morgan Edwards, President and CEO

 

Morgan Edwards founded BEI Corporation (now doing business as UltraBac Software), in 1982 to develop and market software utility applications for the minicomputer marketplace.

 

Having developed a wide range of products for minicomputers over the years, Edwards was compelled to reinvent the company in 1993. Shifting to a new platform became necessary due to the waning minicomputer user base. BEI was renamed UltraBac Software to help define and focus development efforts for the newly released Windows NT operating system from Microsoft®. The result of this shift was the creation of UltraBac Backup and Disaster Recovery Software for Windows NT/2000.

 

Trained as a data systems technician in the military, Edwards served in Vietnam and then went on to graduate from the University of Washington with a degree in business administration. Prior to founding BEI, Edwards worked for three major U.S. computer companies, Burroughs Corporation, Sperry Univac and Wang Laboratories.


Technology

Backup/Disaster Recovery

 

UltraBac Software
15015 Main Street

Bellevue, WA 98007 USA

425.644.6000 / 866.554.8562

www.ultrabac.com

 

 


 

Interview conducted by: Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine, Published –  August 19, 2013


CEOCFO:
Mr. Edwards, would you give us the background of UltraBac?

Mr. Edwards: Our only focus in the market is to provide backup and disaster recovery software, which we have exclusively been doing since 1995. I founded the company in 1982 to originally provide utility software on mini computers and then we transitioned to the Microsoft Windows NT server environment in the mid-nineteen nineties. We were an early backup software innovator for Windows NT, and launched disaster recovery support and relational database agents for the Windows Server platforms as the market matured. In 1995 when we launched UltraBac for Windows NT there were only two other companies providing third party backup solutions in the Windows server market. We experienced substantial growth over the first five years after launching.  We essentially bootstrapped ourselves from the beginning – starting out as a very small company and expanding through sales and internal growth, as opposed to seeking outside funding.

 

One of the limitations, however, of being self-funded has been hitting a plateau caused by the lingering effects to our business from the past recession, which hurt our sales and haven’t rebounded as much as we would like. When we entered this market 18 years ago there wasn’t much competition, but that’s drastically changed today making it more challenging, but not impossible, to continue as a boutique provider of backup and disaster recovery software. In fact, we are feeling very optimistic with having recently launched an entirely new product called UltraBac Warp, new versions of UltraBac and UBDR Gold, and two brand new agents for Linux and Microsoft Hyper-V. We see both the Linux market and the virtualized backup space as strategic market areas offering excellent growth opportunities over the next few years.

 

CEOCFO: What are your plans with virtualization?

Mr. Edwards: We launched agentless backup for VMware last year, which is a high demand solution in today’s marketplace. I’m happy to report that we’ve just added to that by launching agentless backup for Microsoft Hyper-V! Agentless backup solutions are what the market wants right now because of the consolidation of physical servers. Previously we would walk into an organization and they could have 100, 1000, or even more physical servers.  Now it’s not uncommon to walk into the same organization and find the physical servers have been reduced by a 10:1 factor. This is because it’s less expensive to buy a host server and implement 5, 10, or even 20 virtual machines (guests). Virtualization offers savings on hardware, floor space, air conditioning, power regulation and server management. With the advent of virtualization, companies now buy a physical server with enough capacity to run 5 to 20 virtual machines (servers). That’s why these users want agentless backup because it reduces their licensing expense and eliminates the work of installing agents on every virtual machine.

 

CEOCFO: How do you decide when it is the right time to embrace a new technology?

Mr. Edwards: We get new technology stimulation primarily from listening to what our customers want and to be honest, from our competition. To be a market innovator however, you have to occasionally think outside the box and dream up new features and functions that you believe the market will want. Innovative new features and functions that are unique to our solutions have been a hallmark of UltraBac Software over the years. This is pretty amazing considering our size compared to the industry giants in our market space.

 

CEOCFO: What is your competitive edge?

Mr. Edwards: You would have to label us as a boutique software company which has some innate competitive advantages over the likes of Symantec, who has purchased a wide range of solutions over the years and is probably the #1 backup company in the Windows world based on sales and customer base. Customers buy from us because we have great technical support, we have reliable software, and sometimes have key features and functions that our competitors don’t offer. Also, as a small and nimble company, our customers can call and end up talking to somebody meaningful who has great empathy with their business and their data protection. If they are having serious backup or restore problems we have the desire and resourcefulness to come up with a fix or workaround to solve their problem, as opposed to calling up Symantec and saying “I’d like to talk to your CEO about why my backups have failed three times this last month.” What are the chances their issue will ever be directly addressed?

 

As a smaller, niche company, our customers are usually attracted to us only after having used one or more of the bigger brands only to become highly dissatisfied. The source of this dissatisfaction is often different for each customer, but typically revolves around either the level of care and support they receive, reliability of backups and/or restores, needing a better solution, or even lowering the total cost of ownership (TCO). A good case in point is how long it takes to get a helpful response to a technical support question. When users have a restore problem on a server and call in it’s not atypical to be put on hold for excessive periods of time with competitive products. So after waiting on hold for an hour the obviously junior support person informs the customer that they will have to escalate the call and someone will get back within 24 hours. Every minute a server is down is costing the customer money, so imagine how frustrating it is not to receive the needed assistance not only within the hour, but even within the same day. At UltraBac Software, our average customer tech support hold time is less than five minutes and all of our people are senior techs. Additionally, all support comes out of our Bellevue headquarters and English is everyone’s native language. Comparing the support received, along with our response times, to some of our competition and it’s easy to understand why customers like to do business with UltraBac Software.

 

CEOCFO: Is it difficult for you to find employees with both the technical skill and that consumer oriented mindset?

Mr. Edwards: Finding good people is a challenge no matter what industry or market. I’ve read countless resumes and conducted numerous interviews and feel that it’s still a bit of a roll of the dice in making intelligent hiring decisions. In the end, you can only hope that you’ve made a good hire by that person proving their worth in hopefully being a self-starter and in doing a great job. As an example, the difference between a great tech support person and a mediocre one is not necessarily their product knowledge, but the desire to want to solve a problem and going to great lengths to help find a solution.

 

CEOCFO: Would you tell us about some of your new products and features such as your new Hyper-V agent?

Mr. Edwards: The Hyper-V agent is brand new and was just released to the public on the first of July. I am particularly excited about our ability to protect Microsoft Windows Server 2012 running Hyper-V. The reason being is that the host machine is running regular Microsoft server software. As an example, with VMware, it is a hybrid Linux-based host system and typically vendors like ourselves do not back up the host, we just back up the guest machines. Microsoft is a different kettle of fish, and that is going to be a strong point for us because we have very strong file and image-based backup solutions for all Microsoft servers. We can walk into a prospect company who has a Windows 2012 server running Hyper-V as a native application and say, “Mr. Prospect, you have one host running ten virtual machines and if the host fails for any reason, you lose all ten virtual machines.” As is obvious, one of the down sides of server virtualization is that it creates a central point of failure on the host side. UltraBac Software has a strong message. We not only protect virtual machines, but the host itself, using a number of complementary solution strategies including image backup and virtual failover protection.

 

The least cost approach at protecting host machines is through a software only solution. This may not be appropriate for critical servers where investing in redundant hardware is required, but there is always a practical limit to how much spare hardware you can afford to have available for fast disaster recovery. 

 

The majority of server failures are attributed to non-hardware issues, so investing in a software solution that allows extremely fast recovery capability is a lower cost investment for business continuity than buying redundant equipment.

 

As an example, UltraBac Software has been an image-based disaster recovery provider for many years. With this solution it’s both fast and inexpensive to boot into a special recovery mode and restore an unbootable server in under 10 minutes, as opposed to the two hours to two days it might take using traditional backup & restore methods.

 

For any user with a Windows 2012 server running Hyper-V with multiple virtual machines, being able to quickly and inexpensively protect the physical host from becoming a central point of failure for anything less than the absolute minimum of time is crucial for any organization’s business continuity plan.

 

The other requirement for a Windows 2012 server is protecting any and all virtual machines that are actively running key applications like Microsoft Exchange and SQL. This is where UltraBac’s new Hyper-V agent comes into play by providing one pass agentless backup where a customer can restore either files & folders or a complete partition image. Furthermore, the software provides a means to convert VHD files from Windows Server 2008R2 to VHDX files on Server 2012 on the fly, and vice versa, for painless two-way migrations/conversions.

 

The advantage UltraBac has for protecting Server 2012 is that we have a hybrid single vendor solution that is designed to be tightly integrated, whereas other solutions require purchasing a virtual backup product from one vendor and a physical backup product from another vendor.

 

CEOCFO: What did you learn in the marines that has been helpful to you as you have grown the company?

Mr. Edwards: When I joined the service during the Vietnam era, young Marines were assigned to whatever job that needed to be filled as you graduated from boot camp. Lucky for me I scored well on my tests, so I was sent to electronics school as opposed to becoming an infantryman, truck driver, or baker. I ended up having 109 weeks of formal electronics training during my six years of service. This set the stage for me, and I ended up getting a job selling minicomputers at Burroughs Corporation after graduating from the University of Washington, which propelled me down the path to today. It’s safe to say that without my Marine Corp. experience my job today would be something other than that as CEO of UltraBac Software!

 

CEOCFO: Why should the business and investment community pay attention to UltraBac?

Mr. Edwards: I think UltraBac Software has a vast potential for growth. What has been a limiting factor for the company is establishing a higher volume distribution channel. With the release of UltraBac Warp the company is now in a good position to make strategic alliances that can promote our products to a larger audience than what we been able to accomplish in the past. I see expanded distribution as the key to overcoming the obstacles currently in the way of explosive growth at UltraBac Software.

 

I am definitely open to discussing OEM relationships and partnering with companies that have the potential to make an impact on us achieving greater success.

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“Innovative new features and functions that are unique to our solutions have been a hallmark of UltraBac Software over the years. This is pretty amazing considering our size compared to the industry giants in our market space.”- Morgan Edwards

 

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