In the increasingly active and often confusing world of cloud backup and more specifically, cloud-to-cloud backup, companies trying to figure out what technologies and vendors to implement often turn to third party consultants and analysts for expert advice.

If your company is in the process of researching backup solution providers and more third-party validation is needed, below are a few industry experts worth checking out:

1. Rachel Dines, Forrester Research: Rachel focuses on IT continuity and disaster recovery services/technologies as well as backup and data center strategies. Her research is targeted toward Infrastructure & Operations professionals and their strategy and technology needs.

Rachel is responsible for several Forrester Wave reports in the Disaster Recovery area where she compares various vendors’ strengths and weaknesses. Check out her most recent report “Back Up Your Critical Cloud Data Before It’s Too Late”

Follow Rachel on Twitter: @RachelDines

2. Dave Simpson, 451 Group: Dave closely follows companies in the data backup market - writing up major product releases from various vendors as well as other key industry news such as M&A activity. For example “High-flying Veeam closes in on 100,000 customers, but there’s no IPO on the horizon”

Follow 451 Research on Twitter: @451Research

3. Jason Buffington, Enterprise Strategy Group: Jason produces lots of great content on data protection and availability technologies for ESG. Backup solutions are a key area of focus as well. Check out one of his recent videos 8 Suggestions for Every Data Protection Strategy.

Follow Jason Buffington on Twitter: @Jbuff

4. Dave Russell & Pushan Rinnen, Gartner: At Gartner, Pushan and Dave are both focused on backup and storage technologies and strategy. Pushan and Dave produce broad landscape reports such as “Competitive Landscape: Backup and Recovery Appliances for Open Systems, Worldwide, 2013” along with strategic research such as “How to Determine if Cloud Backup is Right for Your Servers” -  their research is designed for larger companies given Gartner’s emphasis on enterprise IT.

Follow Gartner Research on Twitter: @Gartner_inc

5. W. Curtis Preston, Truth in IT: aka “Mr. Backup”, a consultant with Truth in IT, speaker and author, Curtis is all about backup and recovery systems. Truth in IT produces webinars, videos, seminars all dedicated to IT best practices (such as backup!).

Follow Curtis Preston on Twitter: @wcpreston

Any cloud backup analysts you follow that didn’t make the list? Let us know in the comments section.