Cohesity, NetApp and Pure react to cloud demand

Storage vendors are continuing to react to customers’ shift to the cloud with more hosted options, as well as greater flexibility for partners looking to react quickly to changing user demands.

Cohesity has cut the ribbon in Europe on its DataProtect backup-as-a-service (BaaS) offering that can be delivered as a service.

The vendor is hosting the service based on AWS in Europe and is expecting its channel to take the backup-as-a-service out to mid-market and enterprise customers.

DataProtect will support workloads on AWS, Microsoft, VMware, NAS and SQL Server to cover a wide variety of bases.

The vendor said the plans are to add more depth to the backup and disaster recovery options with the announcement that it is adding a second software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering in its DMaaS portfolio, in the form of Cohesity SiteContinuity, which is automated disaster recovery of cloud applications and data.

“It gives European customers even greater choice in how to manage their data, but with all the hallmarks of Cohesity’s multicloud data management platform that they already know and trust,” said Richard Gadd, vice-president, EMEA sales at Cohesity.

“Not only does the expansion of our SaaS offering to Europe empower customers to further simplify data management, but also gives our European partners the opportunity to add their unique value and resell the solution through our distribution channels or via AWS Marketplace.”

Meanwhile, NetApp has made a number of moves to reach out to customers that are operating in a hybrid environment.

The vendor has released the latest version of its ONTAP software and made some hybrid cloud portfolio enhancements to make life easier for those that are spreading data across on-premise and public cloud environments.

Enhancements include NetApp Keystone Flex Subscription at Equinix, improved unified data management across hybrid networks, and updates to its converged infrastructure platform, FlexPod.

“A hybrid cloud strategy is critical to ensuring organisations can keep pace with the growth and complexity of distributed data and applications, thrive in the face of uncertainty and compete effectively in the digital economy,” said Kim Stevenson, senior vice-president and general manager, foundational data services business unit at NetApp.

As-a-service formed the centrepiece of the Pure Storage Accelerate event, which is entering its final week, and Andy Martin, vice-president of global partner sales at the vendor, said the channel needed to be armed with greater flexibility.

“Think about the conversation a partner can have with the customer today,” he said. “They can go in and say, ‘Hey, you have a project today but you don’t know how large it’s going to be and you don’t know where you want to put the data’.”

Martin said the partner could add some services and compute and networking around its Pure as a service and provide answers to those user questions quickly and with a high degree of flexibility.