Integration of Services in Data Protection Software

Most data protection solution providers are moving towards tool integration. This trend is a response not only to the growing volume of data but also to the shortage of IT specialists and the proliferation of regulations.

For many years, the data protection market focused almost exclusively on backup solutions. While backups still form the cornerstone of effective data protection, providers have significantly enriched their portfolios with new products combining multiple tools over the past few years. Storware is among these innovators.

One of the pioneers of this trend is Mohit Aron, a well-known figure in Silicon Valley. His resume includes four years at Google, where he worked on the GoogleFS project, and later he co-founded Nutanix – a company that, with the concept of hyperconverged architecture, introduced a new order to data centers.

In 2013, Mohit Aron launched a completely new project, Cohesity. The startup developed a data protection and management platform utilizing a scalable architecture based on Google’s distributed file systems. Almost simultaneously, Rubrik, another Silicon Valley startup founded a year after Cohesity, developed a very similar solution. These two companies are frequently considered the pioneers of this new trend in the data protection segment.

During his presentations, Mohit Aron often used a characteristic “iceberg” slide. “We’re not interested in critical applications, which represent only the tip of the iceberg. That’s just 20 percent of the data; all the rest lies ‘below the surface.’ In other words, the remaining 80 percent comprises data scattered across various devices used for backups, file storage, object storage, analytics data, or test data,” Mohit Aron explained.

This simple calculation showed that significant value lay hidden beneath the surface, waiting to be tapped. Introducing new systems and challenging incumbent providers required hard work and substantial financial investment, but as it later turned out, the effort was well worth it. Indeed, Silicon Valley investors played a significant role, pouring millions of dollars into both startups.

As is often the case, a considerable number of opponents emerged. Critics of these “all-in-one” solutions frowned upon them, repeating the well-known adage: “If something is for everything, it is for nothing.” Furthermore, the concept of digital asset management seemed ambiguous, as it referred to various processes occurring throughout the entire data lifecycle, including creation, storage, validation, analysis, and protection. Nevertheless, over time, these multifunctional systems began to gain customers – primarily among corporate clients interested in data organization. In the meantime, competing solutions from established backup vendors entered the market, contributing to the popularization of this product group. Digital transformation, occurring in practically all sectors of the economy, also had a considerable impact on the increase in demand.

Data Protection: Growing Challenges

The volume of data continues to explode. According to Statista, in 2024, approximately 402 petabytes of data were in circulation daily, totaling 147 zettabytes annually. This is projected to reach 181 zettabytes by the end of 2025. The way enterprises collect, process, store, and monetize a large portion of this data often determines their business future.

Mike Pedrick, Vice President of Cybersecurity Advisory Services at Nuspire, compared consumer data to plutonium. It’s a powerful and valuable metal, but terribly dangerous to the handler if misused. It’s hard to disagree, especially since many companies have experienced firsthand the consequences of data loss, breaches, or temporary unavailability.

Indeed, most businesses, regardless of size, face similar challenges. One of the biggest headaches for IT departments is the constant battle against cybercriminals, who employ increasingly sophisticated techniques often leading to data breaches. Worse still, securing distributed files and data becomes more difficult as they are spread across various environments, including the public cloud. Data protection regulations, including but not limited to GDPR, also pose a significant challenge.

Nevertheless, adequate data protection is closely linked to data management and storage, which also presents difficulties for many organizations. This is particularly true for companies with large amounts of data stored on various devices and IT environments.

Time for a Change

Although the IT environment is evolving, many organizations still use outdated data protection systems ill-suited to new conditions. This happens for several reasons. The most common cause is limited IT budgets, which prevent equipment or software upgrades. Furthermore, business owners generally have a rather vague understanding of data protection tools. Consequently, they don’t see the need to modernize existing solutions. Sometimes, there’s also a shortage of IT specialists who can operate new-generation systems; this problem is particularly pronounced in the cybersecurity industry.

No matter how you look at it, maintaining antiquated hardware or software will sooner or later come back to haunt users. Outdated products are not equipped to handle large data sets in various IT environments or to repel ransomware attacks.

Aging solutions for information storage and protection are not the only problem. Companies often use multiple data repositories, leading to infrastructure segmentation and the creation of data silos. This, in turn, results in duplication, inconsistencies, missing, or incomplete data. Moreover, it hinders collaboration between different departments and branches, prevents business managers from gaining comprehensive visibility into operational and financial activities, impedes planners from analyzing comprehensive information, and complicates information protection for IT administrators.

The solution to bringing order to this chaos is to reduce point tools to an absolute minimum and invest in multifunctional systems. Such devices typically feature a centralized console for managing devices and applications operating in various storage environments, which significantly simplifies administrators’ work. Furthermore, they enable the execution of numerous IT functions, such as backup, disaster recovery, migration, ensuring compliance with internal guidelines, business analytics, and archiving. On paper, this looks very promising; however, it’s worth approaching vendor offerings with a degree of caution. While a vendor might claim to offer analytics or data copy management, the provided functionalities might be less developed than in specialized products. The choice depends on the specific needs of each company.

Crucially, caution must be exercised with data protection and management products, as there is a risk associated with combining secondary tasks, such as backup, with production elements. Anything that happens on a backup platform should not impact the production system.

Storware Enters the Game

Last year, Storware Backup Appliance System debuted on the market. This solution aligns very well with the latest trends in the data protection segment. The appliance works right out of the box. The system easily integrates with public and private cloud environments, allowing for the extension of data strategies to hybrid configurations. Its deduplication feature reduces storage costs and bandwidth requirements for cloud backups.

Storware’s versatility ensures support for a wide range of backup sources within a single appliance: virtual machines, container and cloud environments, storage providers, physical environments, and Microsoft 365.

The Storware Backup Appliance System is compatible with a broad range of environments, including VMware, Hyper-V, OpenStack, OpenShift, Nutanix, VergeOS, Citrix, and cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Its capabilities span virtual, physical, and container workloads, providing unified protection from one appliance.

Users also receive robust security features in the form of encryption, immutable backups, air-gap, access management, RBAC (Role-Based Access Control), and MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication). Critical data remains secure even in the face of advanced cyberattacks or human errors.