The backup wars we saw earlier this year haven't really gone away, but they've taken a back seat to the auditing wars. For those of you who remember, the battlers in the database backup wars were Imceda (now Quest) and Idera. Anyone involved in this competition definitely felt the pressure (and I'm really talking about the customers more than anything). This is good healthy competition though and I'm personally The backup wars we saw earlier this year haven’t really gone away, but they’ve taken a back seat to the auditing wars. For those of you who remember, the battlers in the database backup wars were Imceda (now Quest) and Idera. Anyone involved in this competition definitely felt the pressure (and I’m really talking about the customers more than anything). This is good healthy competition though and I’m personally glad to see it still thriving. See, for the longest time, Imceda dominated the SQL Server backup space as the only real player. Then Idera came along and some feel that they priced Imceda right out the market. Of course Imceda/Quest supporters feel that the extra cost is justified. Now comes a latecomer in the war that’s already making huge strides… Red Gate. Red Gate has come in and knocked the bottom out of the market, pricing its product significantly lower than the others. What’s worse (for Imceda/Quest and Idera, anyway) is that Red Gate performs just as well as the others in many data sets. Red Gate doesn’t offer the rich features that Idera and Imceda/Quest do so they honestly can’t charge as much. But unless you need the bells and whistles of the other two, Red Gate’s aggressive pricing could easily win your business.The Real Topic That’s not really what I wanted to talk about though. I really wanted to talk about the new war… Auditing. Compliance is driving database auditing to new heights, and can you guess who’s lined up to wage this healthy competition? That’s right… Idera and Imceda/Quest. They both have respectable offerings that, as usual, concentrate on different aspects of auditing. Currently, Idera is working on richer reporting, and Imceda/Quest is working on richer functionality. It’s not really that simple, but that’s the one line synopsis. Oddly enough, both of these vendors are the latecomers in the auditing space. Lumigent has been pretty much the only serious vendor in the auditing arena for years now, but they’re very expensive compared to the new guys. And again, they all take completely different approaches to auditing the activity on your server. In short: Lumigent: Reads the transaction log. Idera: Uses the Microsoft tracing DLLs. Imceda/Quest: Uses their own gathering mechanism. To define which one is best would not only be complicated, it would come down to opinion and environment on many of the factors, so it’s just impossible to say. Needless to say, I’ll be watching. If somebody starts to pull out in front, or makes a huge leap in functionality, I’ll let you know. Databases