Backup and Data Protection Platforms

Modern backup and data protection platforms simplify enterprise data protection across hybrid, multicloud, and SaaS environments. Heads of I&O must use this research to evaluate and select vendors that enhance cyber resilience, mitigate critical data risks, and meet operational recovery needs.

Market Definition

Gartner defines backup and data protection platforms as platforms that capture point-in-time copies of enterprise data for multiple use cases. Primarily used for recovering data from multiple data loss scenarios, they enhance data protection initiatives to improve cyberreadiness and risk management, extract new data insights, and expand data access capabilities. These platforms protect enterprise data in hybrid, multicloud and SaaS environments. Backup and data protection platforms are available as software-only, integrated appliances, and vendor-developed and hosted backup as a service (BaaS).

Protecting and recovering an organization’s data, regardless of the underlying application, infrastructure type and its location, is more important than ever. As enterprises operate in more complex environments, among an expanding threat landscape, backup and data protection platforms must protect enterprise data across hybrid, multicloud and SaaS environments.

These platforms are vital to organizations’ ability to recover data following events that cause data, business and operations disruption. Whether such an event is accidental or due to hardware or software failure, operational errors, malicious attacks, or environmental incidents, organizations use these platforms to reliably recover and restore access to the affected data and applications accurately and efficiently.

Platforms must offer effective capabilities to simplify the management of data protection and recovery across increasingly complex and diverse environments. As a result, they must integrate and support roles beyond I&O teams, such as CloudOps, DevOps, identity and access management, applications, and security teams. They must also offer automation capabilities to reduce day-to-day manual administration overhead to protect mission-critical data and test, expedite and orchestrate data recovery responses for both traditional disaster and cyber events.

Platforms also extend beyond traditional recovery use cases to drive further business value from the data that is copied to the platform. It incorporates use cases that are focused on data- and application-driven enablement, such as enhanced data protection and infrastructure integrations and expanded data insights and access. Enhanced protection capabilities include application and data discovery, automated data-driven policy management, and enhanced cyber recovery readiness features including identity and access protection, multiple cyber detection capabilities, and automated recovery. Integrations extend to bidirectional operational insights with other infrastructure and operations platforms, such as networking, storage and security.

Expanded data insights and access capabilities enable vendor platforms to present data and augment business processes for new personas beyond the backup administrators. New personas include others in IT, such as security, DevOps, and data and analytics, as well as business users, such as compliance and legal.

Report 2026

Here is a summary of the vendors featured in the Gartner magic quadrant 2026 report.
For the full analysis and detailed insights, you can read the report here and view the magic quadrant graphic here.

Market Status	Market Vendor
Leader	Veeam
Leader	Commvault
Leader	Rubrik
Leader	Cohesity
Leader	Druva
Leader	Dell Technologies
Visionary	IBM
Visionary	HYCU
Niche Player	Arcserve
Niche Player	OpenText
Challenger	Huawei

Report 2025

Here is a summary of the vendors featured in the Gartner magic quadrant 2025 report.
For the full analysis and detailed insights, you can read the report here and view the magic quadrant graphic here.

Market Status	Market Vendor
Leader	Veeam
Leader	Commvault
Leader	Rubrik
Leader	Cohesity
Leader	Dell Technologies
Leader	Druva
Visionary	IBM
Visionary	HYCU
Niche Player	Arcserve
Niche Player	Unitrends
Niche Player	Microsoft
Niche Player	Opentext
Challenger	Huawei

Report 2024

Here is a summary of the vendors featured in the Gartner magic quadrant 2024 report.
For the full analysis and detailed insights, you can read the report here and view the magic quadrant graphic here.

Market Status	Market Vendor
Leader	Veeam
Leader	Commvault
Leader	Rubrik
Leader	Cohesity
Leader	Veritas
Leader	Dell Technologies
Visionary	Druva
Visionary	HYCU
Visionary	IBM
Niche Player	Arcserve
Niche Player	Unitrends
Niche Player	Microsoft
Niche Player	Opentext