NEC UNIVERGE BLUE is a suite of cloud-delivered managed services, ranging from Unified Communications such a voice, video conferencing and messaging to Data Services such as contact center, and Backup and Disaster Recovery services. From a data protection standpoint, NEC UNIVERGE BLUE offers backup and recovery-as-a-service (UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP) and disaster recovery-as-a-service (UNIVERGE BLUE RECOVER).

1. NEC UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP & RECOVER
Product Brief
Evaluator Series Research - May 19, 2021
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Overview – NEC UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP &
RECOVER
NEC UNIVERGE BLUE is a suite of cloud-delivered managed services, ranging from Unified
Communications such a voice, video conferencing and messaging to Data Services such as contact
center, and Backup and Disaster Recovery services. From a data protection standpoint, NEC UNIVERGE
BLUE offers backup and recovery-as-a-service (UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP) and disaster recovery-as-a-
service (UNIVERGE BLUE RECOVER).
Technology
• Overview:
o NEC UNIVERGE BLUE managed data protection services leverage industry leading data
protection software, and NEC hardware infrastructure (HYDRAstor® systems often serve
as the storage target). Both the industry leading backup software and NEC HYDRAstor are
covered in depth in Evaluator Group’s Data Protection Software and Systems coverage,
respectively.
o Rather than being one-size-fits-all, supporting infrastructure, including servers required
to run the backup software and target storage systems, is configured per customers’
specific requirements. The infrastructure is hosted in a wide range of data centers
including Iron Mountain data centers, which are geographically dispersed and located 220
feet underground in western Pennsylvania and northern Virginia. Additional details on
Iron Mountain’s security and data escrow services offered under UNIVERGE BLUE
BACKUP & RECOVER are included in the “Security and Compliance” and “Data
Management” section of this document.
• Supported sources for protection:
o Windows®, Linux® and UNIX® physical systems
o Entire VMs (KVM, Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware ESXi)
o Files and folders
o Active Directory objects
o Microsoft Exchange and SQL; MySQL; SAP HANA; and Oracle databases
o Microsoft 365 and Salesforce (via API plugins)
 Microsoft 365 sources include mailboxes (and entire folders, entire calendars, or
individual contacts, calendar entries, or messages), OneDrive and SharePoint.
o HPE Nimble and NetApp storage systems
 Snapshots can be controlled and orchestrated to another storage system
o Kubernetes and Red Hat Openshift clusters
• Cloud Support and Replication:
o Via the backup software, complete on-premises data and entire VMs can be backed up to
and recovered from the cloud. Additionally, complete off-premises data can be backed up

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within Google, AWS and Azure clouds, and restored to same Clouds, and other locations
as well as to NEC RECOVER resources. VM snapshots can be replicated in AWS and Azure,
between regions – and across clouds as well. This means that a major outage in one cloud
would not preclude access to the data/workload (a key concern that customers
frequently raise to Evaluator Group). Additionally, in the event of a disaster – such as the
customer’s entire cloud data store being wiped out – the workload can be spun up in the
NEC Iron Mountain data center as a Best Effort or under a Service Level Agreement.
o Via the Backup software, NEC’s service supports VMware-to-VMware VM replication,
leveraging either a secondary on-premises data center, cloud data center, or the NEC Iron
Mountain data center as the target. Recovery points are still retained, so that the failback
point is preserved. In the event of a ransomware attack, the solution communicates
between two disconnected sites by using backup software gateways/proxies, as opposed
to requiring a VPN connection.
o Most major databases, including SQL and HANA, can also be replicated. Application and
file replication features may be used to do a migration.
o AWS Glacier, Azure Blob,GCP and NEC BACKUP/S3 cloud storage can be used for data
retention. Meanwhile, the NEC Iron Mountain data center can serve as an offsite,
disconnected copy for protection against ransomware and other malicious attacks and for
adherence to “3-2-1” backup best practices. The Backup software provides analytics to
understand data that has not been accessed for a specified period of time and
automatically offload that data (deleting or leaving a stub behind for the on-premises
production system) – and to be able to analyze for risky data, as well.
• Security and Compliance:
o NEC Iron Mountain data centers are energy efficient and comply with a range of security
regulations, including:
 Data Center Level 4 Security as defined by the U.S. Department of Justice
 HIPAA, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS 3.1, SOC 2 Type II, FCC and FINRA information security
standards
 FISMA High-Security for Federal Clients
 SOC 2 certification
o For additional security, access control lists are documented and provided to customers,
and Iron Mountain is leveraged for SoC audits and Cyber Security Insurance.
Furthermore, NEC proactively audits metrics such as backup failures so that the customer
does not have to. Anomaly detection for the identification of unexpected activity that
could signify a ransomware attack (and proactive notification to customers of any
anomalies), as well as Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption of data in flight
and at rest, are also included. For customers with large environments and limited
network bandwidth, NEC will deploy a dedicated UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP Virtual or
Physical Appliance for the customer (as opposed to a multitenant model). This ensures
that local data is deduplicated before secure transmission reducing network bandwidth
requirements, as well as delivers a local short-term copy of data.

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Management
NEC UNIVERGE BLUE data protection services may be customer-operated, or they can be delivered as a
fully managed service from NEC or an NEC partner. This research focuses on the latter delivery model, in
which hardware and software are deployed, operated, and maintained (including upgrades) by NEC.
Additionally, NEC handles the configuration for all backup jobs (which are automated), and recoveries
can occur as an explicitly triggered event, executed either directly by the customer, or by NEC jobs. The
customer designates customized recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs)
for both backup and archive data. When NEC handles the execution of recoveries, service levels may
range from guaranteed real-time (highest cost), to best efforts (lowest cost). Tracking is available for
audit and compliance purposes. Status and performance reports are delivered on a daily or monthly
basis to the customer and available through the NEC UNIVEGE BLUE COMMAND Portal.
Support
NEC manages protection jobs and provides recovery services via its Network Operations Center (NOC),
which is fully staffed and available for customer assistance 24 hours per day, seven days per week, 365
days per year. Customers and Channel Partners have the option to call directly into the NOC or email for
support and restoration services. Additionally, NEC offers a self-help portal to provide guidance on how
to utilize the UNIVERGE BLUE COMMAND Portal to restore data. According to NEC, a ticket is created
upon the email request, phone request or by NEC in the event a failure occurred in a backup job (a
differentiator when other service providers might require multiple hours or a full day to begin working
on a request from when the ticket is created.
Additionally, NEC, in partnership with Iron Mountain Escrow services, offer software and business
continuity escrow, whereby if the channel or SaaS provider experiences a defined Escrow event (for
example, due to bankruptcy, obsolescence, merger or acquisition), the End User customer continues to
have access to the technology and to their data.
Acquisition Model and Availability
The UNIVERGE BLUE go-to-market model was initially established in 2011 as a direct sales model by
NEC, and in 2020 was introduced to NEC’s channel , leveraging thousands of resellers and systems
integrators.
Add-on Services
NEC offers additional managed data center infrastructure solutions, including rental of Enterprise Class
HYDRAstor Storage Systems, and a suite of Cyber Security services which BACKUP & RECOVER is a part
of.

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Pricing
NEC offers a variety of pricing options designed to meet any BACKUP and RECOVER requirement and
promotes Deduplicated storage usage as the underlying basis for the bill. Pricing includes options for
fixed or monthly variable storage consumption, as well as VM, File, Application and HYBRID Cloud API
charges. The customers have the option to hold Monthly, Annual, 3-Year and 5-Year contract terms –
each of which present a lower price for longer term commitments. NEC also offers discounts for pre-
payment for the service in advance. On occasion, NEC offers UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP bundled with
other UNIVERGE BLUE CLOUD SERVICES.
Evaluator Group EvaluScale™: NEC UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP
& RECOVER
Criteria Description
EG View of NEC
UNIVERGE BLUE
BACKUP &
RECOVER
Explanation for NEC UNIVERGE BLUE
BACKUP & RECOVER
1
Services Offered
Breadth of installation,
management, and data
protection services offered
by vendor. Includes
geographic availability and
optional, add-on services.
Meets
Requirements
Full deployment and management
including status and performance reporting
to the customer. U.S. availability via
Magna5, with a range of available add-on
services.
2
Vendor Support
Level of responsiveness;
single-vendor support. Exceeds
Requirements
Can be managed by the customer or fully
managed by NEC, with 24/7/365 support by
NEC. Per NEC, typically starts working on
customer requests within 15 minutes.
3 Contract Flexibility
and Minimum
Commitments
Commitments (e.g.,
minimum dollar volume) and
other contract terms
required.
Meets
Requirements
Contracts are minimum one year,
maximum five year. Requires 60 day
cancellation.
4
Infrastructure
Flexibility
Variety of configuration
options for supporting
infrastructure.
Exceeds
Requirements
Custom infrastructure integration based on
a variety of configurations. No need to
upgrade hardware and software.
5
Supported Sources
and Targets
Variety and
comprehensiveness of data
sources that can be
protected – as well as of
backup and archive/LTR
targets supported.
Exceeds
Requirements
Supports public clouds, virtual machines
(VMs), NAS arrays, block storage arrays, file
servers, and data in persistent containers.
Supported storage targets includes NAS,
VTL, tape devices, block storage arrays,
object storage, and public clouds.
6
Disaster Recovery
and Data Resiliency
Backup and recovery,
replication, HA, RAID,
erasure coding, recovery
testing, data integrity.
Exceeds
Requirements
RPOs and RTOs are customizable by the
customer. Backups and recoveries are
executed automatically or manually.
Includes a variety of replication capabilities
and options for recovery location. High

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availability (HA) operation is possible with
specific configuration. Can automatically
test and verify backups of physical servers
for restorability. Can also automatically test
failover and failback.
7
Economics
Licensing options and data
reduction (e.g., compression,
deduplication).
Exceeds
Requirements
Compression, global dedupe, ability to
optimize for network bandwidth
consumption. The customer pays for
deduped data stored.
8
Data Management
Services
Data cataloging, the ability to
search for and identify
specific files, policy-based
automation.
Technology and DRaaS
Escrow Service
Exceeds
Requirements
Protection policies can be applied
automatically across the resources under
management. Can automatically tier data
to archive/long-term retention storage
using NEC BACKUP/S3 or other storage
targets. Metadata cataloging, mapping, and
search across locations. Policy-based
automation of protection and lifecycle
management.
Business Continuity option where NEC and
Iron Mountain utilize Technology Escrow
Agreements to transfer ownership of
software and end user data, as a disaster
recovery event.
9
Security and
Compliance
Encryption, immutability,
authentication and access
control, documented ability
to facilitate compliance with
required regulations,
anomaly detection.
Meets
Requirements
Encryption, anomaly detection. Satisfies 3-
2-1 requirements (immutability and
isolation. Analytics and
oversight/governance for compliance data.
Facilitates compliance with a range of
security regulations.
10 Billing/
Procurement
Variety of options (fixed or
variable pricing, pay-as-you-
go, etc.).
Meets
Requirements
Option for fixed or variable pricing. Pay as
you go for storage consumed.
Evaluator Group Opinion:
In a market looking to streamline data protection operations as much as possible, NEC UNIVERGE BLUE
BACKUP & RECOVER is truly a managed service, offloading management of protection jobs and
infrastructure alike as well as highly responsive support. Its underlying infrastructure support – including
for the hardware used to run the backup software – is flexible, allowing the service to meet a variety of
budgets and protection levels. Additionally, its collaboration with Iron Mountain for escrow support is a
differentiator among peers.
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Product Brief
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Group Inc. The information contained in this document is subject to change without notice. Evaluator Group assumes no responsibility for
errors or omissions. Evaluator Group makes no expressed or implied warranties in this document relating to the use or operation of the
products described herein. In no event shall Evaluator Group be liable for any indirect, special, inconsequential or incidental damages
arising out of or associated with any aspect of this publication, even if advised of the possibility of such damages. The Evaluator Series is a
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EvaluScale™ is a methodology developed by Evaluator Group to determine the value offered by a product within a technology
area. Evaluation criteria are developed through IT client engagements and an understanding system usage. The definitions of the criteria
and explanations of how products are reviewed can be found in the Evaluator Group Evaluation Guide, which is reflected in the EvaluScale
published in individual Product Briefs. The EvaluScale for each product is determined through in-depth review and analysis attained from
vendor interviews, reviews of user / administration guides, hands-on testing and/or client engagements.