Image credit: Pixtum
Enrico Signoretti

Cohesity

Key Criteria for Evaluating Hybrid Cloud Data Protection

Table of Contents

  1. Summary
  2. About the Vendor Profile
  3. Key Criteria Analysis
  4. Evaluation Metrics Analysis
  5. Bottom Line

1. Summary

Defining Cohesity as a data protection vendor is very limiting. In fact, Cohesity forged a new category of solutions aimed at consolidating data available in an organization, while providing additional services on top of it. From this point of view, data protection is both an ingestion method for the data management platform and the easiest way for its customers to introduce the product in their infrastructure.

Market Positioning:

The benefits of Cohesity’s approach are particularly visible in large enterprise environments. Scalability, efficiency, and a rich feature set enable organizations to consolidate data easily and build a horizontal platform for a variety of data sources. The latest additions to the platform, including the integrated app ecosystem, open up several opportunities to understand and reuse data, helping to improve several processes related to data governance, security with anti-ransomware, and compliance with privacy regulations.

The solution might be perceived as expensive for an SME organization when the only goal is data protection. Still, good Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and Return on Investment (ROI) quickly come into play if the customer evaluates the solution with a broader perspective and takes into account all the data management and data reduction capabilities included in the platform. For smaller customers, Cohesity has a Software as a Service (SaaS) offer now. This solution has some limitations but can be a reasonable alternative for this type of customer.

Cohesity supports the ability to be multi-tenant with a strong Role-based Access Control (RBAC) mechanism that can be at the base of a self-service portal for Internet Service Providers/Managed Service Providers (ISP/MSP) customers. Standard reports on user activities are available, and the same data can be retrieved via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to build customized charge-back mechanisms. The solution allows organizations to build Back-up and DR-as-a-Service (DRaaS) products, but again, there is more value to be derived from other services built upon data protection.

Deployment Model:

Cohesity is a completely software-defined solution and can be deployed on-premises and at the enterprise edge as a standalone hyper-converged scale-out appliance through Cisco, HPE, Dell and Cohesity hardware or in virtual appliances. Additionally, it can also be deployed on a number of public cloud environments, all managed through a single user interface. Cohesity’s deployment process is simple, while non-disruptive cluster expansions and updates contribute to simplifying operations. The same software that runs on-premises is available for major cloud providers, as a virtual appliance and for enterprise edge locations, giving the user the freedom of choice necessary to avoid lock-ins and implement their hybrid cloud strategy without limitation. Cohesity also offers its DataPlatform as a SaaS application for small and medium-size organizations.