Symantec has launched Veritas Backup Reporter 6.0, an enterprise backup reporting tool that enables IT administrators to enhance backup and recovery operations, verify backup service level compliance, and run backup as a shared IT service.

Backup Reporter facilitates data management, backup consolidation, and reporting of heterogeneous environments which support Symantec's Veritas NetBackup and Backup Exec products, in addition to third-party backup solutions.

Backup Reporter allows administrators to be positive about managing compliance with governing policies, by providing them the ability to prove that critical data is backed up and business-critical clients and applications are recoverable within their established corporate or industry backup and retention policies.

Backup Reporter also automates the reporting process, by scheduling and distributing reports via e-mail.

Backup Reporter provides a mechanism for IT administrators to achieve cost analysis, departmental visibility, and chargeback, through which values for running backup and recovery operations as a shared IT service can be formulated, assigned, and approached to specific business units or customers.

"Backup Reporter provides enterprises with superior reporting that delivers premier service-level management that today's enterprise environments demand," said Matt Kixmoeller, senior director, product management, Symantec.