While Clumio started doing VMware backup, and has added AWS to that, Microsoft 365 is the first major application they have added, with their long-term vision being a very broad workload support as part of a single service.
Santa Clara-based Clumio, which emerged from stealth last year looking to reshape the enterprise backup market, has announced that it has added support for Microsoft 365 to its backup-as-a-service offering. It’s the first major productivity application to be added to the platform, which until now has been focused on VMware cloud and on-prem deployments, as well as AWS EBS, reflecting that Clumio is built on the AWS cloud. It will, not, however, be the last.
Clumio is led by Poojan Kumar, who earlier founded PernixData. They differentiate themselves in a crowded market, which includes several well-funded startups like themselves, by having a single platform that allows policies to be applied to any data source regardless of whether they come from on-prem, cloud or SaaS sources.
“We are the industry’s first backup vendor to protect private cloud, public cloud and SaaS data on a single platform,” said Steve Siegel, Head of Product Marketing at Clumio. We intend to do for backup what ServiceNow did for IT service management, what Workday did for HR, and what Snowflake is doing to analytics. It is clear to us and to our investors that the SaaS consumption model works – provided that it is architected properly.”
Clumio emphasized that they are fundamentally different from next-generation backup providers like Cohesity and Rubrik as well as traditional ones.
“From a business model point of view, the approaches we take are fundamentally different from our competitors,” Siegel said. “We are totally built in the cloud. We think that this gives us a late mover advantage. They have acquired cloud-based assets, but have a very fragmented product strategy. They still sell appliances. Some of our competitors might say they have a 100% SaaS solution, but when you peel the onion, it’s different instance on-prem, and in the cloud. Our cloud-native SaaS based approach is different.”
Microsoft 365 – Office 365 until Microsoft decided to rebrand it last week – has an enormous presence in the industry, so makes sense as a good first application to add to the Clumio service. It’s something that is widely supported by many different types of backup, however, since most of the industry is well aware that Microsoft 365’s own backup is limited in scope and that Microsoft recommends that organizations also have third-party backup. Clumio’s message to the market here, however, is that Microsoft 365 email data needs to be protected as part of a broad and robust backup strategy that they are best positioned to provide.
“The tools that most organizations use for this are likely not part of an overall backup and compliance strategy,” Siegel stated. “We are unique in the way we provide backup in this broader context.”
Siegel said to look for Clumio to add more applications to their service.
“We will add support for more workloads,” he indicated. “Our clear strategic intent is to supporting applications with a single backup regardless of where your data is. It is our intent to expand. That’s the direction we are going. We are innovating at a rapid pace, adding new capabilities every week. We have our innovation engine percolating.”
Clumio for Microsoft 365 is priced per user per month and will be available May 6, 2020.
