Breaking down the 2025 Gartner MQ for Backup and Data Protection Platforms
- Matt Tyrer
- 6 days ago
- 14 min read
Table of contents:
Overview - What is the Gartner Magic Quadrant?
For nearly two decades, the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Backup and Data Protection Platforms, or simply "The Gartner MQ for Backup", has served as a crucial third-party analyst validation in the data protection sector. Its impartial analyst insights play a significant role in the product and marketing strategies of the vendors featured. Merely being included in the MQ, particularly in the "Leaders" quadrant, can result in increased client interest and provide vendors with opportunities.
Each year, Gartner updates its criteria for evaluation and positioning to match the latest market demands, trends, and industry drivers, and even the analysts may change annually. This constant change in criteria means that you can't directly compare one year's Magic Quadrant to another, as the metrics for positioning and scoring can differ significantly.
For example, in the 2025 MQ report there were several new criteria that factored into vendor evaluations such as the need to provide immutable data vaults, protection of identity access management (IAM) data, and mandatory protection across at least 2 of the major hyperscalers (Alibaba, AWS, Google, Huawei, IBM, Azure, Oracle, Tencent) - which was a key reason Microsoft dropped from the MQ this year.
In addition, not all criteria carry the same weight. Areas such as implementations of AI/ML within the product, integration of cyber resilience/recovery features into their platforms, and multicloud support continue to be critical to evaluation. Predicting a little into next year (2026) I'd expect to see things such as Agentic AI, cyber security feature expansions into more DSPM capabilities, and broader cross-platform recovery/migration continue to gain in importance.
It's important to note that Gartner reports take vendor market share into account when measuring placement and scoring in the Magic Quadrant, unlike some others. This means that vendors with a larger installed base may hold a stronger position than initially expected—size does matter!
Before delving into my interpretation and analysis, I highly recommend reading the complete Gartner report. It provides detailed definitions of the market, outlines the evaluation criteria, and highlights key elements unique to this year's report. Having this background is key in forming your own perspective on the report. Also, remember that this report focuses on the enterprise market and the vendors' suitability in that context. A vendor might not rank highly for enterprise clients but could still be an excellent choice for mid-market, SMB, or MSP customers.
If you're a Gartner subscriber, you can access the full report directly from the Gartner website:
Of course, many of the vendors in the report have also subscribed to gain permission from Gartner to share the report themselves via their own websites.
With that, let's dive into the report itself!
Highlights - The 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Backup and Data Protection Platforms
If you’re unfamiliar with the Magic Quadrant, let me do my best to oversimplify things. There are 2 main axes:
The horizontal axis is Vision – or what I like to refer to as “talking the talk”
The vertical axis is Execution – or what I call “walking the walk”
Ideally, vendors aim to achieve the best of both worlds by not only comprehending the market and anticipating their customers' needs but also by being able to fulfill those insights and innovations with actual products that meet those needs. As illustrated in the visual above, some vendors excel in execution, meaning they sell a high volume of products, while others are strong in vision, indicating they have a good grasp of their customers. To be a true leader, you need both; the closer you are to the top-right, the better.
Once more, I'm simplifying the situation, as there are numerous factors involved in assessing how effectively each vendor performs, which is why I suggest reading the entire report. Before proceeding, it's important to note that Gartner themselves advise against comparing Magic Quadrant positions year-over-year because the criteria and weightings change, making it an apples-to-oranges comparison. Although I've mentioned not to do this, everyone does it anyways (assuming they improved), so let's address it upfront:
While the top 4 vendors relatively maintained their positions, with the top 3 grouping up a little more closely, we did see some significant changes in the Leaders' quadrant. First off, Druva makes their debut as Leader this year - making them the only 100% SaaS platform in the Leader Quadrant and first new entrant to that space since 2020. Veritas is no longer separately listed now that their acquisition by Cohesity is complete, and Dell Technologies continues their inexorable slide out of the Leaders space - something I'm expecting to see in the 2026 MQ.
Technically, Veeam barely holds onto their position as "Highest in Ability to Execute" (by a sliver) and Rubrik stays just ahead of Cohesity to be a repeat "Furthest in Vision". We'll explore why in the next section when we delve into each Leader in more detail.
Outside of the Leaders there were a few things of note. As previously mentioned, Microsoft dropped out of the Magic Quadrant this year after a brief appearance in last year's report. Huawei is the only new vendor this year, serving as the only representative in the Challenger's space. HYCU lost some ground in terms of Vision, while Arcserve gained position on that axis. Lastly, IBM slightly moved closer to that Leader space.
The Gartner MQ Leaders
The Leaders quadrant is where every vendor wants to be. These are the top innovators who can predict market trends and understand what customers need, crafting products that tackle these evolving challenges and successfully launching them. Let's take a closer look at who these leaders are, why their solutions are so spot-on, and the hurdles they still need to overcome in their offerings:
Cohesity
Cohesity's overall position in the MQ remained relatively unchanged this year, remaining slightly ahead of Commvault in the Vision axis, placing them 2nd overall for Vision (barely behind Rubrik) and remaining in 4th for Execution. This year also marked the first MQ in which the combined Cohesity + Veritas portfolio was evaluated as part of a single "solution suite" by Gartner. The addition of NetBackup and Alta Data Protection helped expand Cohesity's overall workload support significantly, especially for datacenter and SaaS workloads. This will be key for Cohesity as they strive to retain and expand their inherited Veritas install base in large enterprise and the Fortune 100, and jump ahead of Rubrik as #1 in Vision.
Several product enhancements contributed to Cohesity's continued strong position in the MQ. These include the launch of NetBackup v11 which added a host of new capabilities. Within their core platform, Cohesity added new support for Entra ID, and expanded their Gaia AI stack among several other advances in the product. However, the issues around overlap between the newly acquired Veritas products and the existing Cohesity portfolio still need to be resolved including reconciling their pricing strategy across the joint product set.
Verdict: With the addition of NetBackup, Cohesity's workload support across the board is unmatched. Only Commvault can compare to the sheer diversity of workloads and data sources that Cohesity can protect. While there is indeed some expected chaos associated with the Cohesity + Veritas post-merger initiatives, those won't be a distraction for long and Cohesity has the very real potential to be THE platform to beat in the enterprise with their combined technology stack - if executed properly.
Commvault
Commvault maintained their overall position on both the Vision and Execution axes holding onto the 2nd overall spot for Execution and 3rd overall in Vision. That said, they did creep closer to both Rubrik and Cohesity, threatening to leapfrog either or both. Commvault was very busy since the last MQ, acquiring Clumio, launching Cloud Rewind, expanding their Cleanroom Recovery solution into AWS, and a litany of new cyber security features and integrations. Commvault's strategy around Rewind and Cleanroom Recovery was very well executed and has been well received in the market, forcing several other vendors to quickly follow suit with their own respective cyber recovery staging and recovery services and offerings.
With all of these new solutions, products, and acquisitions, complexity has crept back into the Commvault portfolio as customers can be challenged to understand which components are needed and where they must be deployed to meet their desired requirements. This has also fragmented the portfolio in terms of operations as there is no unified user experience (UX) across these various products and tools. The issue of customer support also continues to be a concern from customers (2 years in a row now) as they have seen a departure of several of their Customer Success experts and leaders in recent times - hopefully something Commvault can address before the next MQ.
Verdict: Commvault has expanded their portfolio faster than ever over the past 12 months, which has introduced the previously mentioned challenges around complexity and usability, but those are issues Commvault has successfully addressed in the past and can likely correct moving forward. Despite these concerns, they remain one of the most feature-rich technology stacks in the industry and can address many use cases and data sources others cannot.
Dell Technologies
Dell was the only member of the Leaders' Quadrant to move in a negative direction this year - moving dangerously close to departing the Leader space entirely. Over the past 12+ months their product portfolio has changed very little, and still consists of a mix of multiple disparate tools such as PowerProtect Data Manager, Cyber Recovery, Networker, DataDomain, PowerProtect Backup Services (OEM of Druva's platform), and let's not forget that Avamar and the IDPA appliance are still kicking around.
That said, Dell launched a new managed detection and response service, and integrated their Dell AI Factory to enable data protection for on-premises AI environments. Of course, Dell's greatest strength has always stemmed from their tremendous integration within their own Dell ecosystem of servers, storage, and backup - coupled with the Dell ability to bundle all of those things together.
Dell’s challenges remain rooted in the overall complexity and interdependency of their portfolio - these are cautions that have persisted year-over-year. Customers often require multiple Dell backup products in order to protect their environment, yet Dell does not yet have a unified control plane to centralize management and operations across their various offerings.
Verdict: For customers that are invested in the broader Dell technology portfolio, the Dell data protection suite (DPS) should be adequate for their needs. The solutions are proven, but do lag behind the market leaders in terms of innovation and features. Customers with mixed heterogeneous vendor environments, particularly those with investments in cloud, will need to properly evaluate which of the many Dell solutions they will need to deploy - Dell PowerProtect Backup Service (OEM'd from Druva) is by far the best option for those types of Dell customers needing on-prem, hybrid, cloud, and SaaS workload coverage.
Druva
In my opinion, the biggest disruption to the 2025 MQ was Druva's jump into the Leader Quadrant of the MQ. Druva has been a longtime player in the data protection market launching in 2008 with InSync (same time as Veeam B&R v1.0). It wasn't until 2021 that they landed on their first Gartner Magic Quadrant. One of their few barriers to the Leader's space was that Druva's cloud support was limited to AWS up until late 2023 with expansions with more SaaS and adding Azure data protection. Combined with several other key solution enhancements in cyber resilience, Druva's growing IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS workload support helped push them into becoming a leader in 2025. Gartner highlighted just how strongly Druva has executed on their product strategy.
Druva is the only 100% fully managed SaaS solution in the Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader's space, enabling customers to rapidly deploy and scale the solution with zero infrastructure required. They Druva solution has also been very quickly expanding their AI and cyber resilience capabilities providing differentiated proactive threat detection capabilities and unique cyber recovery features to their customers.
After refactoring a significant portion of their core platform behind the scenes over the past 12-24 months, Druva's solution is poised to continue to innovate - though this effort did come at a cost. Workload coverage, while growing, remains slightly more limited that what their peers in the Leaders' space are currently capable of protecting.
Verdict: Druva's SaaS solution delivers an easy to deploy, simple to manage solution that truly hits the "secure by design" cyber security goals by not having any infrastructure for bad actors to directly attack - something customers would otherwise have to design/architect themselves if using competing solutions in the MQ. This is a great fit for security minded customers and those investing into hybrid and cloud.
Rubrik
Rubrik slimly held onto their lead (1st) in the Vision axis, and remained in 3rd for Execution on the MQ with Cohesity closing in behind them. Since the last MQ, Rubrik has rapidly expanded their SaaS application backup, and even added Oracle Cloud backup capabilities. In addition, they enhanced their core Threat Hunting capabilities with a new "Turbo Threat Hunting" option that pre-hashes the data, enabling much faster results from hunts for malware and other cyber threats. Lastly, Rubrik introduced two new products - the first is specifically for protecting IAM systems, named Rubrik Identity Recovery, the second is a new GenAI platform known as Annapurna.
Despite these enhancements, Rubrik still does not provide detailed reporting capabilities for their platform with customers having to rely on customized in house reporting. While Rubrik has expanded their hypervisor and cloud VM support, their ability to restore across those platforms (V2V, V2C, C2C, etc.) is limited.
Verdict: Rubrik's portfolio continued to grow, and with a pivot back to more of a data protection focus they appear to be finding balance between their expanding their core backup capabilities and enhancing their cyber security products. Rubrik doesn't yet have the broad workload coverage available from Commvault or Cohesity, but it is quickly catching up. Rubrik remains simple to deploy an operate, but that simplicity also translates into Rubrik's platform being more limited in terms of more advanced features and functionality many enterprise customers need such as in depth reporting and robust cross-platform disaster recovery.
Veeam
Veeam continues to (barely) lead the overall MQ in terms of Execution, sitting #1 on that axis yet again, but that lead has narrowed. Veeam also remained behind the pack in terms of Vision, remaining 5th overall in that category and with Druva quickly gaining on them. The Veeam portfolio is still built on at least 6-8 separately deployable products, all of which saw new releases and enhancements. Veeam launched new tools such as Recon Scanner (based on Coveware IP) and new threat detection features for their core Veeam Backup & Replication solution, and introduced their own AI/ML toolset.
Veeam remains reactive in the market, following the pack rather than innovating (as highlighted by Gartner both the 2024 and 2025 MQ reports) - this is evidenced by a limited Veeam Data Cloud (VDC) SaaS solution that does not yet offer support non-Azure workloads or storage, as well as their cyber security capabilities which are equally restricted (only available for their core software product).
Verdict: Veeam's well established market presence and customer base are quick to adopt new Veeam features and products, but Veeam very often shares their footprint with other backup solutions - seeing multiple backup products on the customer floor to address different needs. The Veeam roadmap is ambitious, striving to deliver on 34 new products and enhancements, including significant expansion of their VDC offering and a new release of their core platform. So, look for Veeam to continue to impact the data protection market with a host of new capabilities over the next year.
Other Notable MQ Contenders
We won't delve into every vendor mentioned in the MQ, but I do want to highlight some significant players in the market. These vendors are aiming for the Leaders' quadrant and could potentially move there in the future.
Arcserve
What Arcserve lost in Execution this year in the MQ they gained in Vision with the launch of Arcserve Cloud Storage, Arcserve Cyber Resilient Storage, and several enhancements to their core platform including threat detection and disaster recovery. Arcserve's focus on product development and innovation was rewarded by the Gartner team with a solid move towards the Visionaries quadrant this year. While they are still currently more limited for cloud backup and AI use within their portfolio, we could see those shortcomings vanish over the next several quarters.
Verdict: Arcserve's simple, turnkey UDP appliance offering is well proven in the market and a great fit for midmarket customers or enterprise customers with multiple sites they need to easily manage for protection. Their pricing is flexible and with these latest investments into their product, the Arcserve solution supported by these new resilience features is one to watch.
Huawei
Huawei is the only new vendor to land in the Gartner MQ this year and solo representative in the Challengers quadrant. The Huawei backup portfolio is diverse and made up of several products including data protection and security appliances, cloud backup software, DR offerings, and their own backup storage targets. While their North American presence is limited, they have a large customer base in APAC with growing footprints in EMEA and South America. Huawei has been expanding their workload support to protect more hypervisors, SaaS apps, as well as the Alibaba cloud. In addition, Huawei has built integrations between their various storage, networking, and backup solutions to provide proactive threat detection & defenses across the data being managed. However, like Dell their support for platforms and cloud is limited outside of their own Huawei ecosystem
Verdict: Huawei is an emerging player in the enterprise market, and while their support for multi-cloud and availability is mainly limited to their own cloud they are slowly expanding. For now, it's likely that customers that are invested in the Huawei cloud ecosystem and those with many sites in APAC will be better suited for their solution, but as workloads and geographic availability/support grow so too will their suitability for a broader market.
HYCU
HYCU has some very interesting technology, with their R-Cloud capabilities for SaaS application discovery and visualization + new R-Shield ransomware detection they are very well positioned for SaaS and cloud-native data protection. They support more SaaS applications for backup than any other vendor in the MQ as well as some unique coverage in Google Cloud. That said, the HYCU solution is technically "half-SaaS'd" as they only provide the unified control plane - customers still need to architect and deliver on compute and storage resources, although HYCU is slowly working to reduce their compute requirements. In addition, support for Azure and AWS is more limited, and while HYCU finally has introduced threat detection, they still lack any automated clean restore capabilities to accelerate cyber recovery post-attack. HYCU is one of the few vendors to lose ground in the MQ, sliding lower on the Vision axis falling behind IBM and Druva (who they were positioned ahead of in Vision in the 2024 report).
Verdict: HYCU’s focus on Nutanix and SaaS applications gives them a solid advantage for customers heavily invested in either. There is no other vendor close to providing the SaaS coverage available from HYCU R-Cloud. Customers with larger multi-cloud and on-prem environments may need to look at other solutions outside of HYCU to complete their backup coverage, but the differentiated approach HYCU is taking to the backup market continues to see some interesting innovations. If they continue to expand their cyber resilience features and workload support they will be moving in the right direction again on the MQ.
IBM
IBM jumped ahead of HYCU to lead the Visionaries quadrant overall - just closing in on the Leader quadrant. They've integrated the IBM Watson AI stack to provide powerful analytics and cyber threat detection capabilities as well as real-time ransomware detection via sensors that can be deployed into the "live" data environment (i.e.: IBM is not reliant solely on post-backup malware scans). The IBM portfolio itself for data protection is broad, with several first party and third-party (such as Cohesity) solutions in the mix. This does create some complexity in terms of which of their multiple products may be needed.
Verdict: IBM's technology is proven and steadily catching up with today's business needs for data protection. Their innovations in cyber security integrations and broad channel support make them a reliable partner for enterprises. With some cloud expansion and continued development of their first party IBM Storage Defender solution, we could see them eventually punch into the Leader quadrant.
Summary
In summary, the Gartner Magic Quadrant is a highly regarded industry research report, serving as an excellent resource for assessing enterprise data protection vendors and observing market trends that drive innovation. It's essential to note that this MQ targets the enterprise sector, and while not all vendors are labeled as "Leaders" in the report, they are all leaders within the industry. My analysis is based on my knowledge of the vendors, the market, Gartner's methodology, and my personal experiences with these solutions. I highly recommend reading the full report yourself, as there may be details in the vendor write-ups that better align with your specific business needs.
Finally, at the time of this blog's publication, the complementary Gartner Critical Capabilities Enterprise Backup and Recovery Software Solutions report has not yet been released by Gartner. This report is another excellent resource that explores the technology behind these vendor solutions, their capabilities, and their positioning for various key use cases such as datacenter, cloud, hybrid, and edge. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of combining information from both reports to create your own rankings for the vendors that best meet your data protection needs.
Written by Matt Tyrer. These posts reflect my own opinion and are not necessarily the opinion of my employer.