IBM on Wednesday introduced backup and recovery tools that let users of Microsoft's SharePoint collaboration software protect and restore critical data stored within the SharePoint environment.

The Tivoli Storage Manager for Microsoft SharePoint features modules that provide backup and recovery of SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 (Windows Storage Server 2.0 and 3.0) environments.

The product covers site-level, subsite-level, and item-level restore capability; data integrity; integration with both disk and tape backup environments; and policy-based management of backup data, scheduling, and reporting.

The offering highlights the equivocal nature of the relationship between IBM and Microsoft. On the one hand, the companies are fierce competitors in the market for server software, and IBM also heavily promotes the Linux operating system as an alternative to Microsoft Windows.

On the other, numerous Microsoft applications run on IBM infrastructure components -- both hardware and software -- and as such help drive IBM's middleware sales. IBM's revenue from middleware products, including Tivoli, increased 10% in the company's most recent quarter to $3.2 billion.

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Microsoft SharePoint will be available for purchase on May 4 through IBM and its resellers.