Cohesity Adds Google Cloud Platform Data Protection

Data protection technology developer Cohesity on Monday said it has added Google Cloud Platform capabilities to its Cohesity DataPlatform Cloud Edition.

With the new capabilities, data for applications that use the Google Compute Engine can be protected with enterprise-grade data protection technology that allows unlimited scalability on the cloud, said Sameer Nori, director of product marketing for the San Jose, Calif.-based company.

"The Cohesity DataPlatform Cloud Edition runs natively in the cloud," Nori told CRN. "It had been available to work with Amazon Web Services and Azure. This rounds out our cloud capabilities."

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Cohesity introduced the new capability at this week's Google Cloud Next event in San Francisco.

With the addition of Google Cloud Platform to its Cohesity DataPlatform Cloud Edition, the company is on the way towards helping customers treat data in the Google cloud in the same way they now do in AWS or Azure, Nori said.

"We're bringing the same ability to backup virtual machines to Google," he said. "Customers running VMs on Google and making use of the Google Compute Engine will be able to back up and recover those VMs."

Sai Mukundan, Cohesity's director of product management, said the Cohesity DataPlatform Cloud Edition currently converts on-premises virtual machines to the AWS AMI and Azure VHD cloud-native formats, a capability that will eventually be extended to the Google cloud.

"This is being driven by customers," Mukundan told CRN. "With the Google Cloud Platform, customers are more often just starting to deploy apps in Google Compute Engine and want the same backup capabilities they get with their enterprise data."

The Cohesity DataPlatform Cloud Edition currently does not allow migration of data between clouds, although that is something that may be on the development roadmap depending on customer interest, Nori said.

Cohesity is seeing a wide swath of its channel partner community build cloud divisions or otherwise adopt cloud practices, and the company wants to be a part of that for the top three public cloud providers, Nori said.

"This enables customers to have the full breadth of cloud offerings for customers," he said. "This gives them another spear in their pocket for providing broad cloud support."

The Google Cloud Platform is getting more interest from customers, and providing a full range of data protection for such customers is critical, said Mike Thompson, CEO of Groupware Technology, a Campbell, Calif.-based solution provider and Cohesity channel partner.

"We started investing in public clouds about seven years ago," Thompson told CRN. "It's important to give customers a choice of clouds to meet their specific preferences."

Cohesity has become a great partner for protecting data in public clouds, Thompson said. "It brings great technology to our customers," he said. "Enterprise-grade solutions with cloud integrations that are critical for everyone. Having Google cloud integration is critical for our customers going forward."