Middleton said BridgeHead's software is more reliable than Legato, as is evident by a dramatic reduction in the number of failures during the hospital chain's 8,000 weekly backup jobs.

Middleton is using the software for disk-based backups with point-in-time snapshots throughout the day on about 20 critical servers, which he plans to increase to about 100, he said.

For disaster recovery, Middleton is looking at using EMC and BridgeHead software to provide replication between Symmetrix arrays at a Hewlett-Packard Co. disaster recovery facility in Alpharetta, Ga.