Back-up Solutions

Two years ago, this category was called Tape Backup. We changed it to back-up solutions last year to include the entire gamut of backup solutions. The interesting thing this year is that neither is there a change in the number of members in the club over last year, nor has there been a change in the order. Iomega couldn't manage to remain in the club, and gets replaced by EMC in the last position. EMC enters the club by a narrow margin, thanks to a small addition of votes in its favor by Legato, the company it acquired. HP continues to enjoy the winners slot. In fact, we've had this category running since 1989, and only once, in 2000 was HP dethroned from the top spot. 

Veritas is the runner-up, second year in running, and is behind HP by almost the same number of points. IBM had higher points on the number three position last year, and therefore needs to improve. Although it faces no threat from CA, which is on the fourth position and far behind in score. We find that existing CA and Veritas users enjoy the highest brand loyalty points, followed closely by Sun and HP. Seagate needs to worry as 43% of its existing owners said that they plan to move to IBM and nearly 14% preferred to move to Veritas. By and large the brand loyalties for most of the players in this segment seems to be quite high. Is this because the investments in backup solutions are so significant that they themselves create an exit barrier for a user? HP enjoys maximum support from North, although its support from other regions is also pretty good. Out of the companies that voted for HP, the maximum were from the communications & media industry followed by the services segment. Plus, about 41% of the people who voted for HP were from companies with a turnover of 50 to 100 crores. Veritas got the maximum support from South, and its stronghold was amongst the BPO and ITES companies. It got the highest percentage of votes (around 32%) from fairly large companies( turnover of 250 to 500 crores). IBM received the maximum support from East and West. It enjoyed nearly equal support from manufacturing, BFSI, and the services segment. It didn't get much support from ITES and communications/media companies. A majority of IBM customers were from very large enterprises (more than 1000 crores turnover). Perhaps that's a conscious strategy of IBM, as its votes from smaller companies with up to 50 crores was the lowest amongst all its votes.

Brand Shift (%) 2003

The remaining players-Sun, Seagate, EMC and CA didn't get sufficient votes to merit an analysis of industry and turnover wise breakup.