Shay Mowlem, SVP of Product & Strategy at Rubrik & Chris Wahl, Chief Technologist at Rubrik, sit down with John Furrier & Dave Vellante at VMworld 2019 in San Francisco, CA. #theCUBE #VMware #Rubrik @SiliconANGLE theCUBE @VMware https://siliconangle.com/2019/09/10/backup-as-a-platform-busts-multicloud-ransomware-gdpr-moves-vmworld-startupoftheweek/ Backup as a platform busts a move in multicloud, ransomware and GDPR It looks like data-backup technology has been holding out on us. The historically siloed, unsexy wallflower in the data center has moves; it just needs space and a few apt partners to show them off. Startups and legacies alike are expanding backup software into integrated platforms featuring cross-cloud compatibility, machine learning, and application program interfaces. Now, data management, General Data Protection Regulation compliance, ransomware detection, and more suddenly fit within its scope. Rubrik Inc. began life with a mission to revolutionize the way backup is done. It also saw the extracurricular potential of backup data. It wanted to leverage it in novel ways, to spin it out into additional, high-value services. “We’re starting to see actual execution [of] that … exposing more and more value out of that data — and it’s really connecting [with customers],” said Shay Mowlem (pictured, left), senior vice president of product and strategy at Rubrik. The successful startup realized how backup could weave into data governance, disaster recovery, and data protection. “These are areas that have generally been addressed through sort of separate, siloed approaches, and we see a lot of synergy with backup recovery and brought it all together,” Mowlem said. When these technologies are able to connect and ping off of each other, whole new use cases become possible. They include intelligent threat detection and streamlined data classification as a byproduct of backup. These are some of the services built into Rubrik’s latest Andes 5.1 integrated backup platform. Mowlem and Chris Wahl (pictured, right), chief technologist at Rubrik, spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and John Furrier (@furrier), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the VMworld event in San Francisco. They discussed the expansion of backup and the fresh use cases in Rubrik’s latest platform release (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.) This week, theCUBE spotlights Rubrik in our Startup of the Week feature. Backup moves forward into multicloud The global data backup and recovery market was worth $6.98 billion in 2017 and will reach $18.21 billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 11.24%, according to Stratistics MRC. Growing data, increasing need for data security, privacy concerns, and adoption of cloud data backup solutions are factors driving growth. The broader category of storage itself has shifted since cloud data management became an area of keen focus, according to Wahl. In the past, the storage “food group” was isolated; things went into it; things came out of it, but it wasn’t really integrated into the overall IT architecture. With cloud, and particularly hybrid cloud and multicloud, it became clear that siloed storage would not carry the enterprise forward. Data is now mobile; it has to travel; it has to be in more than one place at once; it has to be available for real-time applications, etc. The same is true of backup, data protection, and disaster recovery. They can’t be stuck; they have to work across all the different environments in distributed IT. Today’s customers increasingly want to match different workloads and services to the best possible cloud. Unfortunately, this bouncing around clouds can create chaos and uncertainty. The situation is reminiscent of virtualization’s old “zombie virtual machine” problem, Wahl pointed out. Security issues abound in busy multicloud environments: User security, cyberhacks and ransomware, to name a few. “It’s a pretty terrifying world, and I think this is that moment where we take a look back and say: ‘Well is it highly available? Is it secure? How do I know that? How am I able to recover from availability, or even external threat issues?'” Wahl said. Rubrik wants to be the data-management platform across the entire multicloud environment. A ubiquitous policy engine with governance rules around protecting assets gives its customers cross-cloud freedom. They can broadly leverage best-in class-services in different clouds, according to Mowlem. “What’s really important is that solutions such as data protection don’t limit your ability to capitalize on that,” Mowlem said. ... (* Disclosure: Rubrik Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Rubrik nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)