Top 5 Midmarket SDS Object Backup Targets

This market report, published on October 22, 2024, was written by Jerome M. Wendt, president and founder, Data Center Intelligence Group LLC (DCIG).

2025-26 DCIG Top 5 Midmarket SDS Object Backup Targets Report Now Available

DCIG announced the availability of the 2025-26 DCIG Top 5 Midmarket SDS Object-based Backup Target Report. This report provides midsized organizations with guidance on the best SDS object-based backup targets for deployment in today’s production backup environments.

Two corporate priorities driving SDS object-based backup target adoption
Twenty years ago, organizations started adopting disk in lieu of tape as their primary backup target. Now organizations have started to make another change in their choice of backup targets. These new backup targets still use disk as their underlying storage media. However, more providers deliver backup targets as SDS with a simple storage service (S3) object-based interface.

Two corporate operational priorities currently drive this trend of organizations seeking out SDS object-based backup targets.

First, all size organizations now embrace a hybrid cloud strategy. While hybrid cloud usage among organizations varies, adoption rate estimates generally range from 80 to over 90%. When pursuing this strategy, organizations often continue to perform backups and recovery. Indeed, backup and recovery may represent the primary way that organizations implement their hybrid cloud strategy.

However, few if any cloud providers make provisions for organizations to host physical backup targets in their cloud environments. Instead, to obtain backup functionality like they have on-premises, organizations must deploy a backup target in the cloud. This requirement has prompted organizations to seek out SDS backup targets in general, and SDS object-based backup targets specifically.

Second, every organization must deal with the threat of ransomware. Object-based backup targets better position organizations to deal with ransomware’s threat as they can withstand a common ransomware attack method.

Most ransomware begins its attack by seeking out backup targets and attempting to delete or encrypt backups on them. SDS object-based backup targets guard vs. these attacks by storing backups in an immutable format. Further, they help organizations restore and recover their data more quickly and economically.

SDS object-based backup targets also put organizations in control of how much they spend on achieving these 2 corporate priorities.

Using SDS object-based backup targets, they can potentially re-use storage hardware they already own. SDS object-based backup targets can virtualize and then manage multiple storage types. These types range from high-performance SSDs to cost-effective, high-capacity HDDs or even cloud object storage.

In so doing, organizations may implement SDS object-based based targets to achieve these competing corporate priorities without breaking their budget.

State of mid-market SDS object-based backup targets
Only a relatively few storage providers (11) currently offer an SDS object-based backup target optimized for use by midmarket organizations. This partly stems from the still emerging demand by midsized organizations for SDS object-based backup targets. Despite the limited number of providers, most midsized organizations will find these solutions possess the core features they need.

Level 1 and level 2 hyrid cloud implementations
All evaluated SDS object-based backup targets support hybrid cloud implementations at 2 levels:

Level 1: Tier data to a general-purpose cloud, purpose-built storage cloud, or private storage cloud.
Level 2: Deployment options that include the SDS object-based backup target operating both on-premises and in the cloud.

While they support both these levels, differences exist between how they support each hybrid cloud level.

Level 1
For level 1 hybrid cloud support, each SDS object-based backup targets can tier data to other clouds. They offer this cloud tiering both for DR purposes and to create air-gapped copies of backups. The differences between the SDS object-based backup targets emerge in the clouds they support and how they implement cloud tiering.

While each SDS object-based backup target supports tiering to other cloud storage, no one product supports tiering to all available cloud storage options. Further, they may differ in the options they offer organizations to tier backups to other cloud storage.

For example, some may only offer options to tier data that satisfies certain policies or reach a certain age. Others may offer sophisticated algorithms or use AI that tracks all data access and usage. It then only moves data that meets specific criteria or, when moving data, places it more intelligently in the cloud.

Level 2
To deliver level 2 hybrid cloud functionality, providers make their solution available in the three configurations that midsized organizations most often need. They may minimally obtain them as:

Pre-integrated physical appliances.
Virtual appliances are supported by major cloud and hypervisor providers.
Software installable on bare metal servers.

Few midmarket SDS object-based backup targets support all 3 of these deployment options. However, organizations will find each product supports at least two of them. Providers usually make one deployment option optimized for on-premises and the other optimized for the cloud.

Enterprise backup software support
Organizations will also find that most enterprise backup software natively supports these SDS object-based backup targets. Minimally, enterprise backup software recognizes the S3 API interface that each SDS object-based backup target presents. This recognition permits backup software to store and retrieve backups from any midmarket SDS object-based backup target.

However, the S3 APIs perform multiple operations. These include multi-part upload, object lock with different data immutability options, replication, and server-side and storage-side encryption, among others.

These differing levels of support for S3 API operations introduce at least two levels of complexity into the decision-making process. First, no midmarket SDS object-based backup target supports every S3 operation. If an organization needs to perform a specific operation, such as object lock, it should verify the backup target supports it. Further, organizations must also verify the backup target implements the operation in the way they intend to use them.

Second, an SDS object-based backup target supporting an S3 API operation does not equate to backup software supporting it. Each enterprise backup software supports different S3 API operations. Further, it may not support the nuances of every S3 API operation. For instance, backup software supporting S3 object lock does not automatically mean it supports how a backup target implements it.

Organizations can take steps to minimize some of these issues. For instance, they can prioritize choosing backup targets that offer certified solutions or reference architectures with their preferred backup software.

2025-26 DCIG Top 5 Midmarket SDS Object Backup Targets
In preparing this report, DCIG formally evaluated over 20 different SDS object-based backup targets of which 11 met DCIG’s criteria for a midmarket SDS object-based backup target.

The general categories under which the features of these SDS object-based backup targets fell included: