Based on user comments from this year's Diogenes Labs--Storage magazine Quality Awards survey for backup software, most backup software vendors should expect an earful of complaints the next time they visit their customers. The following was typical: "The way they manage and update software licenses on their Web site is a complete joke. Whomever [sic] created that process should be fired after they spend a couple of months on the help line." Other comments weren't so polite.

Licensing aside, the very nature of backup contributes to the unsettling feeling some users have about their backup applications because the apps extend to all parts of a storage infrastructure. "Backup products tend to tell you what's wrong with your environment," says Brian Daniels, lead storage area network/Unix engineer at Catholic Health East in Newtown Square, PA.