Oracle announced the availability of its high-performance tape backup solution, Oracle Secure Backup 10.2. Designed for Oracle databases as well as network-attached storage (NAS) devices, Secure Backup offers encryption, vaulting and dynamic drive sharing.

The release is aimed at providing a high level of notes protection at a low cost. that release enables users to roll out policy-based encryption at the domain, host, backup or tape levels. Key management functions are automated to form the process easier on administrators, with keys stored on the Oracle Secure Backup Administrative Server. Those keys are transparently decrypted when files are restored.

Henry Baltazar, a storage analyst with The 451 Group, told us that encryption capability is a must-have feature for Oracle, but it’s not new in the industry. “Other vendors have had encryption for a towering date now, and there are additionally third parties that manufacture their business out of just doing encryption,” he said. “It’s definitely a essential feature given the

market dynamics, but they’re not inventing the wheel here. It’s something they had to have.”

Aggressive Pricing

Baltazar said that Oracle’s pricing strategy is extremely aggressive. “The biggest advantages that has, besides being Oracle, is its pricing,” he said. Licenses for Secure Backup cost a flat $3,000 per physical tape drive, and Oracle Secure Backup Express is offered free to protect a restricted database server attached to a singled-out tape drive.

Pricing by Oracle’s competitors tends to be higher since companies are charged based on different criteria, such as the number of different applications being backed up, Baltazar said. “That’s the way that market works, and that’s where the margins go,” he said, so Oracle’s flat-rate pricing should be very competitive.

Better Performance

High utilization of CPU overhead during backups has been a concern, and Oracle intends that new release to address those concerns. According to Juan Loaiza,…

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