Have you heard about Microsoft Data Protection Server (DPS) yet?
If not, you can see what Windows IT Pro's Karen Forster has to say about it in her recent Q&A session with Microsoft's Ben Matheson. Or you could check out what Microsoft has to say about it on the DPS home site.
It will be interesting to see this product in action. Karen's article shows that it really leverages the Windows Server 2003 Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to provide some tangible benefits. I personally think that VSS was one of the more important innovations in Windows 2003, but it doesn't seem to be well understood or utilized.
What's even more impressive, though, is to look at the list of partners who are working with Microsoft on DPS. I count 36 separate partners and those include some big names in the server protection and backup business. I'm especially amused to see Sun in that list and I wonder what kind of product or support they're going to be incorporating.