Will Cohesity converged data protection management catch on?

Many organizations would like to eliminate the need for multiple secondary storage products for data protection management. Large enterprises usually have one product for backup and recovery, another for storage analytics and possibly a third for data archive management. This approach is not only expensive, but disjointed. Using multiple products opens the door to compatibility issues and the possibility of missing out on potentially useful features.

The idea behind converged data protection is to combine data protection, analytics and archiving into a single, scale-out platform. One vendor setting out to solve this very real problem with data protection management is startup Cohesity.

As for whether or not a wave of Cohesity-like products will soon be introduced to the market is anybody's guess. Very often, enterprise IT vendors seem to follow a "monkey see, monkey do" business model. If one introduces a new feature, it isn't long before competing vendors introduce a similar feature in their own products.

Rather than a single, all-encompassing offering, some vendors may focus on complementary products. For example, some backup vendors may offer analytic and archive add-ons that provide Cohesity-like functionality, but for an additional licensing cost.

It remains to be seen what capabilities Cohesity will build into its product, but managing things like backups, archive discovery, data retention policies and storage analytics has the potential to make data protection management and lifecycle management much easier.