Recommended backup software for PowerVault RD1000

We recently purchased two PowerVault RD1000 (in the rack mount) to backup our PowerEdge R310 running Windows SBS 2011 locally. The hardware is very good: the RD1000 is easy to install, the cartages are solid and data transfer is relatively fast (thought the R310 has only USB 2.0 ports).

On the software side, however, I am not fully satisfied. The Windows backup application does not recognize the cartiges as removable storage devices. That is probably a limitation of the OS, but annoying nevertheless because it is a very simple solution. The software that comes with the RD1000, Retrospect, feels unintuitive and lacks a few important options such as backing up open files which is a must for us. Since I have to purchase this option separately, I am wondering if not buying something else altogether. I looked into Symantec Backup Exec and although a little pricey, it seems a more complete option (I think it came with earlier versions of the RD1000, not anymore). Alternatively, there seem to be a number of appliances that could do.

In the medium to long term, I am planning to move to an online backups solution (probably when we upgrade to Windows 2012 Server), but I would like to keep a local copy with frequent local files snapshots as well and the RD1000 seem to be a good option, especially for archiving the data periodically. Currently we have a Windows Small Business Server 2011, but we are not using the Exchange and SharePoint servers as I moved that to a cloud solution already. What software, appliance, or other type of solution would you recommend?

Thank you.