A new collaboration between Druva and AWS combines data protection and cloud migration abilities in these devices, which back up and restore directly to them, and allow easy petabyte-scale workload transfer to the cloud.

Cloud data protection vendor Druva has announced that their ​Druva Cloud Platform​ is now available on the Amazon Web Services [AWS] Snowball Edge. ​This solution, one of the first to come to market using the Snowball Edge device, combines data protection and cloud migration capabilities, to let organizations move data to the cloud easily on a box with compute capabilities and 100 TB of capacity. Druva makes an unlimited number of these devices available to customers, as the cost is absorbed in the cost of Druva’s Enterprise and Elite offerings. They are now in early access for select customers in the U.S., with worldwide availability scheduled for early 2019.

“This is one of the first offerings going to market using Snowball Edge technology,” said Dave Packer, VP of partner and alliance marketing at Druva. “It’s great to be on the forefront of a technology that’s disruptive.”

The Snowball Edge has similar functionality as an appliance, but Packer said that it’s a very different beast because of its’ ‘as-a-service’ design.

“With an appliance, you have to provision it, manage it, and configure it,” he said. “In the AWS world, you order it directly through the console. You click three things on a screen and its ready to go. All the patching and updates are done for you. It supports all the elements around clustering without the customer having to do any plumbing. It’s as simple as plugging in a phone as compared with installing a PBX system.” The user just applies backup policies and backs up or restores directly to and from the device.

Packer said that this jointly designed offering is ideal for data protection and migration in a world where organizations are offloading more data  to the public cloud.

“Data protection is a $30 billion Total Addressable Market that is ripe for innovation and disruption,” he said.  “Gartner claims that 20 per cent of the enterprise and 40 per cent of the midmarket will leverage the cloud for backup by 2020, up from 5 per cent in 2017 – and we are the category leader in that space. We are a very strong partner of AWS – with over 100 PB under management there – and a class of partner they recognize as being an innovator. We are 100 per cent cloud native and we use the technologies that are the core of their model. Snowball Edge makes a lot of sense for us because we can build on top of that and provide a solution. For companies with a more classic appliance-based model, its more complex.”

Packer said that this solution has a lot of use cases.

“We deal with customers that pivot from on-prem to cloud,” he said. “We have a customer, ANDRITZ, that acquires many companies and want to bring in their data in an efficient manner. With this, they can quickly integrate data by just going to the web console, typing in the address of the data they want to move, and it’s all plug and play. It really simplifies bringing new data in.”

Another use case involved organizations with large numbers of remote sites.

“The device will act as an intermediary to the cloud to synchronize data when it’s more optimal to use the WAN,” Packer said. “It keeps hot data close to the systems while making it possible to manage from a single point. Another use case is for manufacturing customers with disparate sites, some of which have low bandwidth. This lets them have access to all their data.”

Packer said that the Snowball Edge is useful for customers who have been hesitant to embrace the cloud until now.

“In addition to giving them more functionality, this really helps to ease that whole concept of cloud in their mind,” he said. “It’s actually a way to move them OFF appliances, to make that first step to the cloud.

For channel partners, this simplifies the selling model by taking a lot of complexity out of the equation.

“A number of partners are continuing to look for the motion and cadence of how they can work with AWS,” said Timm Hoyt, Vice President, Global Partners and Alliances, at Druva. “They can look to us as an innovative Go-to-Market partner to help them expand that relationship, and their cloud savviness.

Druva offers these customized AWS Snowball Edge devices within the Druva Cloud Platform through the Phoenix Data Protection Service, as part of Druva’s Enterprise and Elite packages, at no extra charge. Customers order them through the ​Druva Cloud Platform, and AWS ships them, pre-configured, directly to them.

“They can get as many as they need,” Packer said. “There is no cap on that.”

Druva on AWS Snowball Edge is now in early access for select customers in the U.S.. Worldwide availability is scheduled for early 2019.