Its hard to find time to backup data these days. In the past, most IT departments backed up a full day's worth of data overnight when the business was shut down. But in this 24/7 Internet age, many businesses don't close down operations when night falls and they're looking for ways to shrink the amount of time it takes to back up data.

FalconStor Software Inc. and Network Engines Inc. on Monday will unveil the Virtual Tape Library Appliance, which could help customers reduce the time needed to back up data. The VTL appliance consists of hard disk drives and IP Stor backup and recovery software. The hard disk drives look like tape drives to other IT devices and systems, so existing software at customer sites still interacts with what it thinks is a bank of tape drives. But the hard disk drives move the work along much faster than tape drives can.

VTL Appliance features include high availability when configured in pairs, the option to move data at any time of day without any impact on application performance, and remote vaulting to actual tape storage over the IP network for long-term archiving. The VTL appliance costs $15,900 for the IP edition, and $29,900 for the Fibre Channel edition, both available as of Monday from TidalWire, a Network Engines company.

An industry analyst thinks the VTL appliance can attract new customers to "virtual tape" because the appliance costs a lot less than systems from IBM or Storage Technology Corp. "FalconStor and Network Engines could do it on their own," says Michael Karp at Enterprise Management Associates. But combining the two is "more efficient and a higher level product because each does what it knows best."