There's a lot going on in the data protection and cyber security markets - it can be hard to keep up with all the news. That's where The Competitive Corner's Newsletter comes in, to help curate and distill the most pertinent movers and shakers each month to make your job easier.
October was certainly less busy than last month, but we still some big news from Commvault and other key newsmakers including #Eon, #Rubrik, and #Veeam. Below you'll find a breakdown of why these news items matter to you, links to the original articles, and related blogs for further research and insights.
October 2024 Competitive Headlines:
(click any headline to jump directly to the analysis)
Eon Launches out of Stealth with $127 Million to Reinvent Cloud Infrastructure Backup
[Link to Original Article]
Why it Matters?
It’s not too often we see brand new backup solutions popping onto the scene, but Eon has emerged from stealth mode to showcase their approach to cloud backup. Built in AWS, the solution is very focused on the database side, but does also provide file level protection. The interesting element is the data classification (and record classification inside DBs) and some posture management in terms of the backups themselves. It will be interesting to see where this goes, but with $127M in funding
they are off to a good start.
A new AWS centric backup solution appears, although their claims for differentiation seem a little flawed. They are building around the idea that existing backups based on snapshots are
“black boxes” from which recovery can “take weeks” for a single file to be restored. While the challenges they lay out certainly do apply to a wholly cloud-native approach, they don’t apply to
proper backup products where the cloud snaps are fully indexed, searchable, and backups from snaps can be quickly recovered at scale or granularly.
A recap of the Commvault SHIFT announcements and product launches!
[Link to Original Article ]
Why it Matters?
The Commvault SHIFT event took place this week and there were several key announcements to address. Before diving into the technology side, it is important to note that Commvault used the SHIFT event to also kick off new GTM messaging built around the concept of “Continuous Business” as the new paradigm (replacing Business Continuity).
Now let’s dive into the various technical/solution announcements from the Commvault SHIFT event:
New solution - Cloud Rewind (Appranix)
First off, Commvault launched their new Cloud DR solution called "Cloud Rewind" (a repackaging of Appranix, based in GCP). Cloud Rewind allows for quick, agentless discovery, orchestration, and recovery of entire application environments running in AWS, Azure, or GCP clouds.
Commvault has published several technical whitepapers providing additional details around the respective solutions of “Cloud Rewind for AWS”, "Cloud Rewind for Azure" and "Cloud Rewind for Google Cloud". If you're looking for more technical details on the solution, this is a good start. One thing to keep in mind is that regardless of which cloud the environment being protected by Rewind resides in, the Rewind platform itself runs out of GCP.
New solution - Commvault Cloud Backup and Recovery for Google Workspace
As expected, Commvault has announced they will be launching Commvault Cloud Backup & Recovery for Google Workspace before the end of the calendar year. This will be available via SaaS, and based on prior roadmaps the offering will be served up by the Azure-based Metallic solution. Google Workspace backup will initially support Gmail, Google Drive and Shared Drive data with Calendar and Chat support planned for future releases. Commvault will be bundling Workspace backup with Google Cloud Storage (to serve as primary backup target) with Commvault Air-Gap Protect storage (in Azure, AWS, or OCI) as a secondary backup target option.
This would imply that pricing would likely be a mix of $/user as well as $/GB since they would be bundling storage in. Current target for GA release is before the end of calendar year 2024
Expanded - Commvault Cloud in AWS
This will be the eventual relaunch of Clumio as part of the Commvault Cloud which is set to take place before the end of the calendar year. Commvault showcased their upcoming S3 backup which supports object versioning and the Clumio solution being able to manage and recover those versions at scale. In addition to this, Commvault is launching their “Air-Gap Protect” cloud storage solution in AWS. This expands the offering now to be available in Azure, OCI, and AWS. Along with that comes new support for Commvault Cleanroom Recovery for AWS. Since the Cleanroom solution requires the backup data to be stored in the Air-Gap Protect repositories, they had to wait to launch both together.
Expanded - General other updates, enhancements
New Active Directory Forest level restore workflows
Enhanced performance/support for Azure Data Lake, MongoDB, CosmosDB
RAG extensions for PostgreSQL
New support of Backup for Databricks
New HyperScale X Edge and Compute-only appliances
With Commvault soon to be operating a 1st party cloud-native backup solution in AWS, they will be a much stronger competitor in AWS-centric opportunities.
CrashPlan Acquires Microsoft Partner Parablu to Extend M365 Protection
[Link to Original Article]
Why it Matters?
Crashplan has been in the business of protecting endpoints for over 15 years, and are a strong niche player in the protection of those devices. They used to be owned by Code42, but were
acquired by private equity firm Mill Point Capital for $250M USD back in August of 2022. This acquisition of Parablu (a niche M365 backup vendor, built by many ex-Commvault folks) extends that
niche play into the M365 space - a crowded space admittedly. Parablu is built in Azure and while they do offer their own storage their differentiation came from being one of the few backup vendors allowing customers to consume their existing MACC commitments as a backup target.
No details around the financial aspects of the acquisition have been disclosed. This is the first acquisition made by Crashplan since becoming a separate entity, but the CEO has alluded to there potentially being more in the future.
Akira and Fog ransomware now exploit critical Veeam RCE flaw
[Link to Original Article]
Why it Matters?
Last week, Veeam was launching their latest “proactive” threat detection solution called Recon Scanner. This week, we’re hearing that Sophos X-Ops has confirmed that Akira and Fog ransomware attacks are now leveraging the Veeam remote code execution (RCE) flaws disclosed in September (along with 17 other CVEs). This latest exploit is being used in conjunction with previously
identified Veeam flaw to target Veeam customers and not only obliterate backups, but use the compromised Veeam systems as a springboard to conduct lateral movement and widen the attack. In all cases, these CVEs all do have published fixes, but the ransomware attackers are preying on the fact that many customers just haven't applied the patches or haven't been able to.
Written by Matt Tyrer. These posts reflect my own opinion and are not necessarily the opinion of my employer.
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