Red-Gate is a British company that offers uniquely deceptive and simple tools that are extremely powerful. One tool of theirs' that I absolutely love is SQL Backup (what a simple name). This application replaces Microsoft's built in SQL backup capabilities and offers additional control over the backup process. The three most significant features are:

1. Compression - Databases can get big quick. You don't want to back up a database and use up the server's hard disk, nor do you want to delete database backups daily or even weekly. SQL Backup helps with this issue dramatically. I generally see 80% or more compression on my databases (no they aren't paying me to write this).

2. Speed - While offering compression they sometime also manage to shorten backup windows. This is always excellent, but extremely amazing in this aspect. Microsoft performs no compression on their backups, Red-Gate performs an extra step on the backups and still beats Microsoft's native backup.

3. Encryption - Red-Gate makes it dead-simple to encrypt your backups. A nifty feature when those backups include sensitive information.

    Anyways, take a gander at James Moore's blog post Welcome to my world...SQL Backup 5. Its a good read and he was the technical lead on the development of this release.