Gartner's 2026 Magic Quadrant for Backup and Data Protection Platforms, published in late June, places Cohesity, Commvault, Rubrik and Veeam close together in the Leaders quadrant, with Veeam slightly ahead, according to Blocks & Files on July 3. Gartner evaluated 11 suppliers. Druva was the fifth best-placed vendor, Dell sat near the Challengers boundary, and Kaseya's Unitrends was dropped from the report. Veeam said it was named a Leader for the tenth consecutive time.
For buyers, the bigger signal is in Gartner's planning assumptions. It predicts that by 2029 to 2030, 70% of organizations will prioritize the ability to recover identity systems, up from under 15% in 2026, and that 70% of enterprises will shift cloud backup responsibility from cloud operations to IT operations. Recovering servers is not enough if you cannot recover the directory that lets people sign in.
When reviewing your backup service, ask your provider whether Microsoft Entra ID or Active Directory is backed up and how quickly it can be restored, not just files and servers. Ask who owns backup of your cloud workloads and SaaS apps, and whether that is written into a contract. If you use Unitrends, a market change like this is a reasonable prompt to ask your provider about the product's roadmap.
A vendor's position on a chart does not tell you how well it fits your environment. Recovery testing, support quality and total cost for your data volume should drive the final decision.
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Veeam
Veeam is the #1 backup and data protection vendor globally with $1.7B+ revenue, named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Backup and Data Protection Platforms. HITRUST CSF certified and protecting over 18,000 healthcare organizations worldwide. Hardware-agnostic software that runs on any infrastructure. Federal government solutions with DISA STIG support. SOC 2 Type 2 certified. PCI DSS compliant for cardholder data environment backup. The industry standard for MSPs and enterprises.
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