If all you're looking for are compressed backups with a little extra restore functionality take a look at HyperBac. They're a young startup, but they're not new to the backup game. I'll tell you how this fits into the picture.

HyperBac is a project of Jeffrey Aven. Jeffrey Aven was the original developer of LiteSpeed back when it was under DBAssociates. Then, Walter Scott bought DBAssociates and turned it into Imceda. He then turned around and sold Imceda to Quest for around 60mill. Walter left Quest shortly after and went to Acronis. Both Walter and Jeffrey have been under noncompete agreements and both their agreements are now expired. So Jeffrey started up HyperBac which is a SQL backup util, but it works more at the driver level. So you don't have to alter any of your code, and SQL doesn't have any idea of the existence of HyperBac. You just define where you want the backups to be compressed and it happens at the OS level when SQL takes a backup.

Now, Walter also has a new SQL backup util, but it's really not ready for any real SQL shops. It's ok, but everything has to be coded manually, and the interface isn't very stellar.

Now, as RedGate's product goes... I don't agree with the way they do everything, but I have worked with it and it's a nice tool. You can't really go wrong. Another bit of history here too. RedGate's tool used to be called MiniSQLBackup written by Peter Yeoh. At least I think I'm remembering that correctly. Anyway though, RedGate bought it and turned it into the product it is today. It's really nothing like it was when they bought it so they've definitely made it their own.

Yeoh still has products. You can see his stuff at http://www.yohz.com