Jason Buffington

20-year subject-matter expert in Windows infrastructure, with additional deep specialization in data protection, high availability and disaster recovery/business continuity scenarios. Experienced in product marketing and management, channel readiness and enablement, and enterprise-direct technical sales – across three resellers, two ISVs, and Microsoft.

Gold standard of data protection methods goes through sea of change

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Not too long ago, the gold standard for protecting organizational data involved using a disk-to-disk-to-tape process. First, a copy of production data went to secondary disk to expedite rapid recovery if needed, and then the data went to tape for long-term retention. Previously, some organizations used only tape, and a few moved to using only … Read more

Wrap-Up on Backup from Microsoft Ignite (with Video)

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As ESG often tries to do, here is a short summary video of ESG’s impressions from a major industry event – Microsoft Ignite, held in Atlanta over September 26-29, 2016 – from a backup perspective. In the video, I suggested that Microsoft is a leader in Windows data protection. Certainly, this is not to disparage … Read more

New Veritas = New Vision

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This week, the newly unencumbered Veritas (from Symantec) relaunched its premier user event – Veritas Vision. There was a palpable energy that resonated around “we’re back and ready to resume our leadership mantle,” starting with an impressive day one from main stage: Bill Coleman (CEO) started the event by making “information is everything” personal by … Read more

Enterprise data protection strategy requires evolution

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Most organizations supplement traditional backup with some combination of snapshots, replication and archiving to achieve more comprehensive data protection. They are using what we at ESG refer to as the Spectrum of Data Protection. Innovative data protection vendors, meanwhile, are constantly reacting to the changing IT landscape in their attempts to give their customers and … Read more

“Tape” is not a four-letter word

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In the 25+ years that I have been in data protection, much of it has been spent hearing about “better” alternatives to tape as a medium. Certainly, in the earlier days, tape earned its reputation of slowness or unreliability. But nothing else in IT is the same as it was twenty years ago, so why do … Read more