Microsoft and Rubrik tie-up extends channel data protection pitch

The strategic alliance struck by Microsoft and data management player Rubrik should benefit the vendors’ respective channels, giving resellers a chance to pitch a unified solution.

The agreement between Microsoft and Rubrik included an equity investment from the software giant that would cover go-to-market activities and engineering projects as the pair work around rolling out zero-trust data protection solutions.

From a channel perspective, there are a significant number that work with both firms and those that handle both vendors will benefit from the fruits of the partnership, giving the respective reseller bases the opportunity to take the solution to market.

Juan Orlandini, chief architect, cloud + datacentre transformation at Insight, gave a reaction that expressed the views of many in the position of holding relationships with both vendors.

“Insight is committed to enabling our clients with solutions that securely make the most of their data across increasingly disparate environments, sprawling data estate, storage modalities and more,” he said. “It’s why this deepening partnership between Microsoft and Rubrik is so impactful for mutual clients – they are seeking to execute cloud-first strategies more seamlessly, to protect data, and to recover quickly and efficiently from rising ransomware and cyber security threats.”

At the vendor level, the rationale for the tie-up is connected to the changing customer landscape, with cloud migrations having accelerated during the pandemic. The two firms will be looking to take workloads from mission-critical applications, as well as data coming across a network attached storage system and adding automation and protection as that information heads into a Microsoft Azure environment.

“Customers, across industries, are migrating to the cloud to drive business transformation and realise growth,” said Nick Parker, corporate vice-president, global partner solutions at Microsoft.

“End-to-end application and data management is critical to business success, and we believe that integrating Rubrik’s zero-trust data management solutions with Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 will make it easy for customers to advance their zero-trust journey and increase their digital resilience.”

The firms have an established relationship and already support 2,000 mutual customers globally, with hundreds of petabytes of data already under Azure management. The vendors have reported growth in a number of verticals, including health, financial services, education and local government.   

Bipul Sinha, co-founder and CEO of Rubrik, said the business was already helping customers to protect data from issues such as ransomware and this strategic partnership would add more depth to its offering.

“Together with Microsoft, we are delivering tightly integrated data protection while accelerating and simplifying our customers’ journey to the cloud,” he added.