Cohesity partners with AWS to deliver Data Management as-a-service offering

Cohesity DataProtect Backup as a Service will be the first service within the new offering when it launches near the end of the year, although it will not initially be available in the AWS Canada region.

Today, Cohesity is announcing the formation of a strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services [AWS] around a new Data Management as-a-service [DMaaS] offering that they believe is unique in the market. They also announced that AWS becomes Cohesity’s preferred cloud provider for DMaaS, and that Amazon has made an equity investment in Cohesity.

“We are announcing a new direction around Data Management as-a-Service,” said Doug Ko, Director Product Marketing, Cloud Products and Solutions at Cohesity. “We are entering into a strategic collaboration agreement to deliver DMaaS. It is the first of a kind, and enables us to chart a new course in the data management space. It is focused on mid-sized and enterprise customers, and provides them with the most comprehensive set of data managed services, managed by Cohesity and hosted on the AWS Cloud. We are also announcing that AWS is our preferred cloud partner for DMaaS.”

Ko said that the decision to partner with AWS around DMaaS makes sense on several levels.

“We have a longstanding relationship with AWS already,” he stated. “We have a shared vision on customers, with 400 plus joint customers. We also have a 140% YOY growth on AWS.”

The foundation for this new DMaaS solution is Cohesity Helios, a SaaS-based data orchestration and management platform that the company introduced in 2018.

“This is not our first step into SaaS,” Ko stated. “We came out with Helios a year and a half ago, and now have over 1500 customers on it. With DMaaS, we are just extending the SaaS model for the data itself. Helios was originally about simplifying management through a single pane of glass. Now, by investing in the control plane of the solution, we have extended the single pane of glass management to DMaaS.”

The DMaaS solution will let customers subscribe to multiple data management offerings, which are often purchased separately and from different providers, through Cohesity. These include backup as-a-service, whether on-prem, cloud or SaaS, disaster recovery, file and object services, copy data management, and data security and governance.

“We have worked hand in hand over the last year designing this collaboration, to provide the most flexibility over a hybrid environment,” Ko emphasized.

The first offering that will be made available to organizations as part of this DMaaS solution is Cohesity DataProtect Backup as a Service [BaaS] offering is currently in early access

“It is in early access preview, and is slated for GA before the end of the year,” Ko said. “It will be available both through consumption-based pricing and through prepaid pricing, with the specifics of pricing TBA closer to the GA date. We believe that customers and channel partners want both options.”

When the BaaS offering does launch, it will be in the AWS US-East and US-West regions only, and will be available as a free trial option.

“We have plans to broaden this further internationally in the first half of 2021, although the exact locations have not been finalized yet,” Ko noted.

More channel details will also be announced at GA, Ko added.

“In general, they are excited about this,” he said. “This will be available both through our traditional channel model as well as the options that AWS provides. We are seeing a good uptick in how AWS manages their channel. The key for partners will be to provide their own services on top.”