Rubrik Polaris is a separate SaaS platform that provides a new turnkey offering that partners can offer to their existing install base, and which should itself generate new sales of entire Rubrik systems among compliance-minded customers.

Cloud data management vendor Rubrik has launched Rubrik Polaris, a SaaS platform that complements their flagship data management offering by providing a global policy framework, workflow orchestration, and deep data intelligence as cloud-delivered applications. They also announced Polaris GPS, the first offering for Polaris, which provides a single control and policy management console to unite globally distributed data.

“We started Rubrik 4-5 years ago with a vision to simplify enterprise data management with cloud data management products,” said Bipul Sinha, Rubrik’s CEO. “Our core value is that wherever your app runs, we run next to it and provide data protection. Now we are releasing our next set of products, in the next chapter in what will be a long history of Rubrik.”

Sinha said that Polaris joins the Rubrik portfolio at a time when the company is showing extraordinary momentum.

“We have grown from nine to 900 employees and are hiring 50-60 people a month,” he indicated. “We are approaching a $300 million run rate, and $292 million in equity capital. We operate in 29 countries. Investors and advisors tell us we are the fastest growing company in the enterprise space in the last 20 years.

“We are also creating a lot of value in our ecosystem,” Sinha added. “We sell 100 per cent through the channel, and have close to 300 transacting partners worldwide. The majority of them have doubled their revenues with us in the last 12 months.”

Rubrik Polaris meets another perceived strong need in the market, the need to address the data sprawl that has occurred as it has become easy to store data on the best available choice from a cornucopia of global data centres and private and public clouds.

“As enterprises go multi-cloud, the biggest problem they face is that the data that used to be in one place in one data centre is now distributed across many,” Sinha said. “So now businesses need a unified system of record to bring it all together on a common platform. That’s what Polaris delivers. It creates a formal framework around all metadata by bringing a global content catalogue onto this platform. We have been offering solutions around backup, archiving, archiving, and DR. On Polaris, customers can define global policies to satisfy compliance requirements. They don’t have to worry about where they run applications.”

Sinha compared Polaris’ relationship to the core Rubrik platform as akin to role that the Force.com platform plays with Salesforce.

“Force.com sits on top of all the Salesforce applications and creates a formal system of record,” he said.   “Like it, Polaris is a complementary product. It works with our existing solution to provide more value to the customer. You need to have the core Rubrik data management product for Polaris to work.”

Rubrik also announced Polaris GPS, the first data management application for Polaris. Polaris GPS provides a single control and policy management console for the distributed locations, which are locally managed by Rubrik’s Cloud Data Management instances. It features a global dashboard that visualizes all applications and makes system troubleshooting easier, and an intelligence engine which delivers custom analytics and reporting. The reports generate records to demonstrate global SLA compliance for data, regardless of where it is located.

Sinha said that Polaris responds to a demand from channel partners, and will benefit them on several levels.

“The best part of Polaris is the additional value-add it provides partners,” he said. It’s an opportunity for them to deliver a turnkey solution with no additional infrastructure needed. They can go back to their existing Rubrik install base and offer this new solution. We believe that in many cases, Rubrik Polaris will  become the driver for adoption for net-new customers as well. It will create new opportunities to upsell and cross-sell. Partners are very excited about this.”