Imagine my surprise when I arrived at the Red Gate offices Monday morning to find Jeff Aven at the office. I had a double take since Jeff is one of the founders of Hyperbac, and since Red Gate has SQL Backup, I’m surprised that Jeff was even allowed in the building. They’re competitive products in the same space.

I assumed there was some deal in the works, but didn’t ask and remained quiet. I hadn’t tweeted or posted anything, and I’m glad. Even a “Just saw Jeff” probably would have gotten me into trouble. We all received an email later that day that informed us Red Gate had purchased Hyperbac (press release) and that it would be announced after customers were contacted. That’s good business, and while it seems silly, it makes sense. Most customers probably don’t care, but a few might.

What does this mean for Hyperbac? I’m not sure. In the short term nothing. There will be two separate backup products from Red Gate. My guess is they will be priced similarly with some choice, but who knows. We’ll see when the sales and marketing team has a chance to examine both products.

I think for the most part either product works for most DBAs. There are some technical differences in how they work, but for the most part they compress and/or encrypt backups. That’s almost a base, core function these days, especially as database sizes grow.

Hyperbac has a nice, core engine and my guess is that over time the best parts of Hyperbac and SQL Backup will merge somehow, depending on what happens with the built-in compression in SQL Server.

In either case, they’re both great products, and Red Gate has done a great job of supporting DBAs for years, so I don’t hesitate to recommend either product.

I did enjoy seeing Jeff, who I have known for almost as long as SQLServerCentral has been in existence.