The ultimate solution for data protection and storage from Microsoft has been released to manufacturing. The RTM of Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 was announced by Ted Kummert, corporate vice president of the Data and Storage Platform Division at Storage Networking World. According to Kummert, Data Protection Manager 2007 is but another step forward in delivering Microsoft's vision of Universal Distributed Storage introduced in 2006, describing strategies designed to enable business customers to increase the efficiency of storing, managing and protecting data.

"Specific to our growing portfolio of storage solutions, we also announced the release to manufacturing of DPM 2007. DPM 2007 is designed to be the new standard for Windows data protection, delivering continuous data protection for Microsoft applications and file servers using seamlessly integrated disk and tape media. The work that went in to creating DPM 2007 demonstrates our commitment to the storage industry - to provide solutions that set the bar for affordability, scalability and ease of use", Kummert stated.

Microsoft stressed the fact that, although data protection and storage solutions are generally addressed at large corporations, DPM 2007 is an exception to this rule as companies of all sizes can integrate the product in order to safeguard the integrity of their data. Currently, Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 is scheduled for general availability in November. Microsoft will launch the product, accompanied by additional components of the System Center family of management solutions, at the Tech-Ed IT Forum, in Barcelona, Spain.

"Consistent with our strategy, DPM 2007 brings such enterprise-class capabilities as protecting a broad ecosystem of workloads - files and applications, including SQL Server, Exchange Server and SharePoint Portal Server - under a common framework. In addition, we also added enterprise-class capabilities such as recovery from disk and archive to tape. With DPM 2007 we also went one step further to design the protection from inside-out, so it would appeal to administrators of specific workloads", Kummert added.