As I remember, the documentation is online with the product. It sounds to me more like he's simply not familiar with enterprise-level backup systems, as nothing about it was particularly difficult for me to learn. But enterprise-level backup systems is not the world's easiest subject (though it's far from the most difficult). It sounds to me like the documentation assumes a level of expertise he doesn't already have.

I would probably take exception to his notion of "storage policy" = "tape drive" and so on, but, again, I can't remember precisely.

At the same time, if he's got a single tape drive and a single backup server, it's probably massive overkill, and that's probably the source of confusion. Sometimes systems designed for complex implementations become more confusing with simple implementations, as it becomes difficult to understand which pieces are extraneous to your situation, and perhaps that any of them are extraneous at all.