The Dark Side of Backup System Consolidation

You found the backup wrap up your go-to podcast for all things

backup recovery and cyber recovery.

In this episode, we explore the recent wave of consolidations

in the backup industry and the potential dangers that consolidation

can have in your environment.

We discussed major acquisitions like Cohesity buying Veritas.

Salesforce acquiring own backup and a few others and what these mean to customers.

We also examine the risks of keeping legacy backup systems

running after a migration or a consolidation, including security

vulnerabilities and ongoing costs.

We also talk about a solution to those concerns.

A lot's going on right now and we're making sure that you're up to date.

By the way, if you don't know who I am, I'm W.

Curtis Preston, AKA, Mr.

Backup, and I've been passionate about this topic for over 30 years, ever since.

I had to tell my boss that there were no backups of the really

important database that we just lost.

I don't want that to happen to you, and that's why I do this podcast.

On this podcast, we turn unappreciated backup admins into Cyber Recovery Heroes.

This is the backup wrap up.

Welcome to the show.

If I could ask you to take just a quick moment and click subscribe or

follow whichever platform you're using.

And remember, you can watch us on YouTube or you can listen to us on your

favorite podcast platform, and uh, I am of course w Curtis Preston, AKA, Mr.

Backup.

I have with me what I believe to be a brand new cohost.

don't recognize him at all.

Prasanna Malaiyandi, how's it going?

Prasanna, I think you are indeed.

Prasanna, correct?

Yeah.

I'm not an AI clone, so that's a good thing.

Um, no.

Yeah.

And like you said, for people who wanna see the new me

go check out our YouTube feed.

First you need to go watch the old him from like, you know, a previous

episode and then you watch the new you.

Yeah, I decided it was time.

So I had been growing out my beard and my hair for four and a half years,

Yeah.

So you had a, you had a, a feared.

I think, I think the fact that it, you know, 'cause you had a,

you know, you had a tweed, then a feared, then once it became feared,

I think it was time to fear it.

Yes,

exactly.

It was time for it to go.

So that was gone and then I figured, ah, at the same time,

might as well cut my hair.

So I had started growing out my hair because I was like, okay, at the end of

all of this, I want to donate my hair,

right?

So you can donate it to organizations where they'll make wigs for, uh,

people with like cancer or who've lost hair due to treatments.

And so I donated to a organization called Wigs for Kids.

Yeah.

Nice.

I donated, I think it was like 22 or 23 inches.

It's.

So I hope it'll make a nice way

The, the, the, the funny thing is that I'm pretty sure I've told you I've

never had my hair as long as you have your current hair right now in my life.

And then so trying to relate to you having your hair basically down to your butt.

Like I just, I couldn't fathom that, but Well, I welcome the new you to the, you do

look like a completely different person.

It's really kind of funny.

It's actually very light also, like it doesn't feel like there's something

on my head, you know, like hair people would think it's like fairly light,

but when you have that much hair.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That is funny.

Um, well, you know, speaking of like lightning, the load, we're gonna talk

about like an interesting concept.

I think this week we're taking a break from the, we're

from the ransomware series.

Be because there was, once again, an announcement today of yet again,

another backup consolidation, you know, consolidation of the backup industry.

Um, so let's talk about some of the ones that have, that we've heard about,

uh, in the last few months.

yeah, and I think one thing, Curtis, it's important to understand is

a lot of these companies when they start out, they're like, oh,

we're gonna do one particular work

workload really, really well.

right,

And they make great inroads on that one particular workload.

But then the challenge becomes most customers don't just want 20

different backup software or backup,

right in their environment.

And so that's why you're also starting to see, hey, this company did a great

job with this one particular workload.

Let's acquire them beef up our portfolio and offer that to our customers

along with the rest of the package.

Yeah, I think when I look at the list of companies, and we'll talk

about the, the actual list in a minute, uh, I do think that, um.

Like each of them sort of picked a workload?

Well, well actually when, when I look at the list, there's

different ones here for for sure.

There are different types.

There are some that are the way you described and then there's,

then there's at least one

that is kind of a really big deal.

In terms of, you know, the, the way that the, the way this whole thing

went down and, you know, they're definitely, they definitely don't

qualify that for the type of thing.

So let's talk about, um, and I think, you know, just again, before we get

to the list, if for the companies that picked one workload, kicked the butt out

of that workload and then got acquired by somebody that wanted that workload.

Good on them, right?

Um, they didn't shoot for the moon, they didn't try to boil the ocean,

um, and then they got acquired.

Um, and maybe, you know, you could argue that maybe the payday isn't as big if

they don't boil the ocean successfully.

And then, um, uh, but it's an actual payday,

Yeah.

Well, and I think also it's not just building the

product, it's also selling it.

Right.

And I think as a smaller company, having that sales force who can go

out and touch all of these customers becomes really difficult and expensive.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, um, well let, well, let's talk about the products first.

We'll talk about, uh, let's just list them first and, uh, why don't

you talk about, um, the first one, I think that started this whole thing.

I.

Yeah.

So, and by the way, all of this is just this year,

Yeah.

Yeah.

This year for sure.

Yeah.

yeah.

So the first one, which I think kind of astounded a lot of folks,

was Cohesity acquiring Veritas.

Yes.

Specifically Cohesity, well, I would call it Cohesity, acquiring most of Veritas.

Which was, which was interesting.

We, we'll talk about that.

Um, and then we have, and I don't know, I think it's in this order.

And then we have Salesforce, and this is a really interesting one.

Salesforce acquiring own backup.

I think they're called own software

Own software.

Yeah, well it was own backup I think was the product.

And then own software.

Uh, and then we have Veeam Acquiring Alcion, which is one I missed.

I don't know how I missed that one.

Yeah, that was a couple of weeks ago.

And then today the big one that came out

was Commvault acquiring Clumio.

Yeah.

And these are all companies that I've, you know, I've had something to do

with over the years, none of which.

Just double checking.

None of which I've actually worked for.

Uh, but I've worked with them, you know, talked to them, you know, aware of them.

And, um, the, you know, and when, and when you look at this list, three of them

are what I would call startups, right?

Uh, you know, basically they, they created a company to do a thing,

and then they got acquired.

Hopefully to do the thing.

Right.

And then there's Veritas, which is, is very different than that.

was a very surprising move because.

I would argue that Veritas is probably, now, they're probably number

three in terms of backup market.

I, I don't, I actually don't have up to date numbers on that.

I, I, there's certainly, I.

They've certainly gone down the list in terms of if we look at new

product, you know, um, you know, it's kind of like, um.

It's kinda like you and I both own Teslas and for a while there, like the

model Y was the most popular car in the world, but that doesn't mean that

it's most popular car on the road.

Right.

Um, certainly Veritas became less popular as a new product,

um, over the last few years.

And, um, but I think that they still had due to, and and that's I think

what we're gonna end up talking about at the end of the episode here due to.

The stickiness of backups,

Yeah.

they were still in a huge amount of, um, you know, environments.

I, I would say that it's, you know, the saying that like, you never

get fired for picking vendor X,

right?

Because they're the stable one, they're the

mature ones.

They're the ones that everyone uses.

I would say Veritas was probably that vendor

it

the longest time.

yeah.

And they were, when I, when I was using it, like, you know, all the time they

were, that they were that product.

Right.

They were the one that you, you know, um,

the breadth, right?

yeah, yeah, yeah.

So let's talk about, uh, for, for those that don't follow

it the way that you and I do.

Let me just describe Veritas, Veritas, um, I would put like Veritas

Commvault, TSM, Arcserve networker.

These were, uh, did I forget any from, well, like data protector.

Yeah.

These were what I would call what we would now probably call legacy backup products.

That doesn't mean that they're, that they're old, it just means that they

were from a time when if you were a backup product, you did everything right,

It was like wave one of backup products.

were.

Yeah.

Um, and this is what I grew up on.

Um, and the, you know, some of that initial wave, uh,

these companies are gone.

You know, my first commercial backup product was actually called SM Arc, which,

about that.

Yeah.

funny because, and you may recall that I, now, now that I've, you

know, learned things, I don't like that they call themselves SM Arc.

It should have been called s and back, but, but I digress.

Um, because our archive is not backup, but, um, and by the way, SMR and Veritas,

uh, they were from the same town up there in, in Minneapolis or, well, nearby.

Nearby.

They were from, they were from a suburb of Minneapolis, both of them.

But Veritas, you know, back in the day when there were like 37 different flavors

of Unix and um, and uh, windows and.

How many different database products there were.

There were like three big ones in Informix, Oracle, Sybase then, then

you added to that, uh, SQL server.

Um, and these were the guys that they did every flavor of Unix.

They did every flavor of database and um, what's that?

Mainframes,

And well, actually, I don't think they did

did they never touch mainframes?

Was it

don't think so.

This was, yeah, this was sort of the open systems backup world.

The mainframe folks, uh, you know, kept to them,

kept to themselves.

Right.

They also didn't do, uh, VMS as, I don't think, I don't think.

Which is weird,

Any of the new, well, you know, we were kind of killing it off, you know,

it was like, you know, you didn't wanna do mainframe, you didn't wanna

do VMS, just like, and I'll tell you a story, um, again, back when I was

back in the day, I think we need like, I think we need some music for that.

If you could edit that in Curtis.

um, like when I was brand new in backup, there was A-A-V-M-S

box in the data center and.

For two and a half years that I spent at this company.

I said the following, I, I don't even have a login to that.

I don't even, I don't, oh, you need, you need VMS backups.

Go talk to the admin.

you need to talk to this guy.

And, uh, Ron, Ron Rodriguez, the guy that whose job I took,

but I didn't know anything.

I knew Unix, but I didn't know anything about VMS and I was like, yeah, I,

you know, if you, if you need VMS backups, you gotta go talk to, um.

Um, you know, to run, yeah.

For two and a half years.

I said, I, I, nobody even gave me a login.

I don't, you know, I don't know, you know, but, uh, so VMS was still kinda weird, but

the but Veritas net backup, backup exec was much more a Windows centric product.

Right.

Like an SMB mid-market

yeah, exactly.

Um, and Veritas acquired backup exec from Seagate Backup a hundred years

ago, and they, they were gonna merge the two products that never, that never

Sometimes it's better never to merge.

Yeah.

Uh, I, I, I'm pretty sure they gave it the old college try,

but that just didn't happen.

was what they did was they did just literally everything.

And then they continued to add new workloads as they came, right?

When VMware came out, when v you know, um, when, uh, HyperV came out, when

the cloud came out, when they, they did their best to add all the new, oh, and

by the way, you also, in that backup world, you also had to support every

kind of tape library, every kind of deduplication, target, you know, um.

also built their own deduplication, if I recall

They did build their own deduplication.

That was the way it was because the backup environments were that way, you.

Yeah.

You know, I, I would go into environments and they go, well, we've got 37 Soliris

boxes, 15 a IX boxes, 12 HPUX boxes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And if you didn't check every one of those boxes, you wouldn't get that deal.

Yep.

Um, and we've now completely consolidated that world.

Right?

It's now basically Linux and Windows.

because production has been consolidated.

Your backup environments have also been simplified.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, and so, but, but all those workloads are still around, right?

You know, um, the, the, I mean, that's a beautiful thing about Unix, most

of these versions of Unix haven't had new code written for them for,

for more than a decade, and they're still running just fine, right?

Um, and so.

Products like NetBackup, networker, TSM, you know, and the fact that

they covered all those old products, they continue to have a market,

Yeah.

not a new market.

Right?

Yeah.

Because that's not where all the new workloads are going,

right?

It's when customers move to first virtual machines, and then

when they move to the cloud.

It's like, oh, why do I need the same infrastructure and the same?

And it also I think, comes back to why do I have to manage

those backups the same way

when the way I manage production in the cloud is very different than

how it was on

exactly.

Um, so they just became, you know, a lot less, um, popular and, uh, and so, um,

Cohesity, which is a, you know, a new, uh,

new, yeah.

That's wave two.

Yeah.

Sort of that, the, the consolidated, um,

Yeah.

Integrate data protection

appliance.

Cohesity.

Veeam.

Well, Veeam, I'd say Veeam.

I put Veeam like right at the beginning of that second wave where it was Windows

centric, uh, disc centric, disc only.

Really?

Right.

Um, they're like, tape.

What's, what's tape?

Right?

They, they only, they only added tape after massive customer demand to do that.

I would say Avamar is in that wave as

Avamar is in that wave as well.

Yeah.

Um.

Yeah.

And, they've gotten a lot of traction, right?

Cohesity, um, and.

But I think, you know, and we can talk all day about what exactly they were

thinking when they acquired NetBackup.

What are they, what's their plan there?

Uh, I'm, I am, I am, I, I have zero inside knowledge.

I am only a hundred percent convinced that the answer is they ultimately

want to turn as many customers of NetBackup into, uh, Cohesity customers.

Right.

Um, and by, and by that I mean customers of the new platform.

It is interesting that they didn't acquire all of Veritas

that's the thing, right?

So, so what did they, they left behind, did they leave behind Backup

Exec and Enterprise Vault, which is, I don't know that, I don't know.

I, I understood the enterprise ballpark.

I didn't understand why they didn't bring backup exec.

There's, I'm sure there's reasons that I don't, that I'm not

privy to, but these are two very different products back, exact.

'cause, you know, we talked about it's, you know, it's a workload centric product.

Yeah, I do also wonder if maybe Cohesity thought that they already

have that covered with their existing product, or maybe it

might be also a go to market, like

if their sales team

is not capable of having that as a channel.

yeah.

And so then, um.

Yeah, so basically Enterprise Vault, which is an an archiving product, right?

And backup exec, which is a Windows centric backup product.

Those stayed and they're forming a new company, which

currently doesn't have a name.

They're

I thought it's called new company, isn't

they call it DataCo,

Oh, DataCo.

which cannot possibly be the new, I mean, maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe it'll be DataCo.

We'll see.

Um, there have been weirder name companies, but anyway,

um, so we got that coming out.

Um, let's, we gotta talk

What comes next?

Uh, let's talk about, uh, Salesforce acquiring

this is your favorite.

what's that?

I know this one is your favorite topic to talk about with Salesforce

Yeah.

Yeah.

'cause Salesforce, yeah.

I mean, it's such an important database for so many people and the fact that they

don't back it up, that the vast majority of them don't back it up just kills me.

Right.

well, I think you should talk also, I know we've had past episodes, but sort of

like their attempts to do backup, right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They've had, they've had like two, so for the longest time they

kind of back up all of your data.

But if you need it, it costs, if you need it to do a restore, it cost, it

was, it was $10,000 to do a restore.

It was, it was like four to six weeks expected delivery time and

zero expectation of recoverability.

Like literally, this is all in the contract, right?

So it's like they, they're like, you didn't pay to, you

didn't pay to back it up.

So we, we, we, we just designed it in a way that was easy us, easy for us

to back up and, uh, and, and we don't really care whether or not you restore.

That was that, it was the

then they killed it off though, right?

And then they killed it off at one point, right.

They

Then, well, they, they came out with their own backup product,

which as I recall, they pulled and then they brought back, they, they

had some attempts, uh, of coming.

I think what they saw was that a number of companies like our former employer,

Druva, a number of companies, had got some success with backing up Salesforce.

And they're like, Hey, I think maybe we're leaving money on the table.

Ultimately, I, I think it, apparently they have ultimately said, this is too hard.

We're gonna just gonna go buy somebody that, um,

Well, and I think that own software was sort of the leader

in the Salesforce backup space.

yeah, yeah.

And so, uh, so that, that's very much like what you talked

about in the beginning, right?

Is that.

Here's a product.

They just do Salesforce backup.

And Salesforce is like, let's buy one of those, you know?

Um, easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

Um, and so that, um, I, and by the way, we're not talking too much

about like the number, like the acquisition numbers and whatnot.

That's not really the point here, but that's a perfect goon

where you just basically, you're obviously, you're a Salesforce

customer, you wouldn't be using it.

And then, um.

And now you're, you know, now you're just sending your checks to a different place.

That's an easy one because there's not really any.

It's not like when, earlier when we talk about Veritas acquiring backup exec, um,

there's this like, integration thing.

Zero integration.

It's already integrated.

You just, you just send your checks to a different place.

Right?

Um, maybe your

And you get all the benefits.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Uh, that one made a perfect sense.

So the next one to that came up, I think this was actually two weeks

ago or a week ago from this recording date was Veeam Acquiring Alcion.

So I used to actually work with the co-founder of

, Yep.

back in the day.

Um, his prior startup was actually one that was focused

solely on Kubernetes backup.

Called Kasten, which

acquired by Veeam.

He spent some time at Veeam and then he's like, Hey, I'm gonna go do something new.

So he left Veeam and then he started Alcion.

yep,

Alcion was a Microsoft 365 backup solution,

And this, yeah, this is that perfect thing, just like you

said of where they, they just, I.

We're j we're just gonna do this one thing.

And what I remember about Alcion is that what they focused on was ease of

installation and ease of use, right?

Rather than we're gonna be the fastest or we're gonna be the most complex, or,

you know, the most feature rich, uh, they said we want to make, we wanna like

have you click a couple of buttons and then you've got yourself 365 backup.

Yeah, and I know at least looking at a bunch of their blog

posts and other things, right.

They were also very focused on ransomware protection.

I.

Right, and

making sure that that is all secure.

So

I think it totally makes sense.

Like Veeam was like, Hey, we've already worked with this company

with a lot of the folks before.

They have a solution that is doing well in the market, right?

Let's bring it in-house, leverage the Veeam uh, selling machine,

Right, So you get this out to our customers as well.

Yeah, and I'm trying to remember, I.

Veeam had, this is sort of like the Salesforce story where Veeam had had

tried, uh, creating their own 365 backup, and I, you know, the product

was out there, it was selling, right.

But I think they took a look at what Alcion had done and said, yeah, we

like this better, so we'll just buy it.

Yeah, and I know Veeam has done this in the past.

For instance, when they did their cloud backup, so like AWS backup, they had built

their own and then they had acquired N2WS.

If

back in the day, Curtis, and then they, I think they eventually

built their own after that, so,

Yeah, the N2WS thing was sort of a Charlie Foxtrot I would call it, because

it, it was a good product, it was well known, and, uh, they bought it.

And then, um, basically the government customers of N2WS didn't like the, the

Russian sort of aspect of Veeam that was.

Present at the time, which they, I believe they since addressed,

but, uh, they had to like sell it off right after they bought it.

And then they, and then they came out with their own,

uh, but then they decided, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and it's interesting also just sticking with Veeam, I'm just

waiting for the time when the, 'cause you know that the Veeam Co-founders

went and started their own startup,

right.

The OI think.

OOTBI.

Yeah.

Right.

So it's just a matter of time because they're building immutable

storage specifically for Veeam.

My guess is at some point they may get acquired

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, what are you and I not why we should be making some, some

product for, yeah, for Veeam.

Um, the, um, well, I actually currently do work for a company

that is working with Veeam.

Um, so maybe, hey, who, who knows, maybe we'll get acquired by Veeam.

Before we go.

to the next one.

So like you were saying, I think the last one, right, with Salesforce acquiring

own software, I think with this one, with Veeam acquiring , it makes sense

because it is, here's a product which does really well in their space.

It makes sense with our existing product portfolio because we either have a gap

or our customers are demanding it, we'll acquire them, bring it in-house, and then

hopefully they still continue to flourish.

Even while being part of the larger organization.

Right now the final one is we, it's, it's brand new.

It literally just came out this morning, right?

Uh, as, as of the date we're recording it, which is, uh, September 25th.

But, um, this one I.

Doesn't appear to be as good of a story as the other ones.

Um, Commvault acquiring Clumio.

And, and I say that because the, the, the number, and I, I know we said we

were gonna talk about numbers, but it's, it's, it's kind of all we know

about it at this point is that they were acquiring it for $47 million, which is.

Like a fifth of the invested money in Clumio, which means

it's, that's not a success story.

Um, which means generally that they're acquiring it for reasons

that we don't quite understand.

Um, we also understand they're acquiring part of it, kind of like the Cohesity one.

Right.

Yeah, they said they were, uh, uh, acquiring some assets.

Now we don't, we don't know what those assets are or

which parts they're taking

from that.

And I, you know, I, I, I competed against Clumio, uh, when I was at Druva, and I

remember looking at it and I remember certain aspects of it I really liked.

Um, and, um,

I remember,

the SQL backup

for the way they did

yeah, the way they did SQL Backup, that was, yeah, that was a big one.

Um, and the, I, I do remember having kind of a feeling that I felt they were

kind of tried trying to boil the ocean,

um, which is, which is.

Kind of, it's kind of easy to do in the backup world because there's so many

different backup problems to deal with.

And, um, but yeah, I, I don't, I don't think ultimately they boiled that ocean.

Um, and, and we, what we don't yet know is we don't know what they've acquired.

We don't know, um, we don't know what's gonna have to

existing customers, et cetera.

Right.

Yeah,

But,

I could see, just speculation.

It would be interesting if what they acquired was mainly

sort of their deduplication engine that runs in the cloud,

because as you know, right, Commvault has their metallic surface

service.

Right.

Yeah.

But from everything I've heard, it's.

Not very scalable and my guess is it's sort of been more of a lift and shift.

Now, this was a while ago.

Maybe things have changed.

Yeah, I don't, I don't think so.

Yeah.

but yeah.

Benefit of the doubt.

Right.

But I'm guessing maybe they're looking at this as a way to sort

of re-architect their backend to

become more efficient and

It is.

Yeah.

'cause that was the other thing that I remember was really cool about Clumio

is that they really were into like.

The latest gen of like serverless computing and things like that, even

more so than Druva was at the time.

I remember thinking that, um, although we were, we were, we had been in the

cloud much more, and it's like we are, we're well aware of serverless computing.

We use serverless computing where it makes sense, right?

And we were possibly too big.

Doing too many backups to certainly to use serverless for everything.

Right.

But that, but I know that I, I, you're, you're right.

My understanding is that you're correct, right?

That with Commvault, it's basically the, like, if, if you look at how they

describe the product, it's basically Commvault just running in the cloud.

And that's why they, why they have such feature parity between the two products.

I, I do not believe, and anyone can feel free to.

Correct me.

Um, I do not believe it's, it's a rewrite for the cloud.

Yeah.

But I think the biggest thing is, I know you mentioned earlier sort of

Veritas when they bought backup exec.

Right.

I think the question is how difficult is it to integrate this technology

if that's what they bought it for into their existing stack.

That's always

and, and by the way, what, what could be the case with Clumio is that they're

like, we're buying this backup piece and maybe there's some skunkworks

project that we don't know about.

And they're like, yeah, you don't get this one.

This one's, this one's my new pet project.

I'm gonna go work on that now.

Whatever that, you know, who knows, who knows what it is.

I think we have a nice segue into, um, this idea of when backup products get

acquired, when companies get acquired, when you have consolidation of any kind,

you often have, um, old backup products.

That get left by the wayside.

Right.

Or backup installations that get left by the wayside.

You were, you know, I'll just, I'll just make up something.

You were a net backup customer, and then Cohesity acquires, uh, net backup.

And then your worst fears are realized, and I, I'm just making up a story here.

Your worst fears are realized.

And you know, you get a letter that says, uh, we're shutting down

NetBackup and you have to move.

Right.

Um,

Or the cost becomes so prohibitive, right?

that's another, that's another thing, you get told that like you have to

upgrade to something because you know the licensing and, you know,

um, and so what happens, and by the way, I, I, I apologize to Cohesity.

Like, I'm not saying that's what you're gonna do.

I'm just saying I needed to make up a story and you were in the list.

But, um, the.

The concern and I, I made a LinkedIn post this morning that, that was talking

about this, this, this problem of legacy backup solutions, and I wanted to talk

about how big of a deal it is to have a backup product just sitting around

that you're not really using anymore.

Why?

Why would they have it sitting around?

Why don't they just shoot it in the head?

Pulling office space, I think was what my comment was.

Yeah.

Why don't they just pull an office space on the backup system?

Why don't they do that?

well, because they still need the data if they ever have to restore.

yeah,

It's not like they never need it, that

they can put a bullet in it, but

Now I, I would ar Yeah.

I would argue that the number one reason is that many people are using their

backup system is an archive system.

Right.

Which they shouldn't be, but you know, whatever.

Um, because what

you see that I called you out on that because I knew you were gonna mention

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, the, because you know, that's not what a backup system's really for, to,

to get the spreadsheet from, you know, a year ago, that's not really what it's for.

It's to restore the server the way it looks yesterday.

Right.

Um.

If you had a decent archive system, you would be able to just, you know,

gimme the, gimme all the versions of this spreadsheet over the last year.

Um, but so what's the problem with leaving it sitting around?

Well, it's probably powered up, connected to the network

and forgotten about,

right?

No one's touching.

It's like that example you said of your VMS system, right?

You're like, I don't have login.

I don't know that system.

I'm not touching it.

Right?

Everyone like your backup admins are probably gonna forget about it

because nothing's going to that, right?

All your backups are going to your new infrastructure.

Everyone wants to always play with the shiny new toy.

Yeah.

Shiny new toy.

Exactly.

It's like, squirrel.

Squirrel.

Um, but I told you my A DHD knock, knock joke.

Knock

think you have who's there?

A DH, D, squirrel.

Anyway, so, um, welcome, welcome to

And so, so they, they get forgotten.

And so Curtis, what's the problem when they're sort of left

dude.

Security backup systems are already as like.

Insecure is the wrong word.

Not secure.

Like, I don't know what the word, what the word used there.

They already have enough security concerns, right?

Just as a production system that's actively being used.

If it, if it's like left in the corner and nobody's looking at it, that is a

giant security hole waiting to happen.

Right?

Like what sort of issues come about?

Well, I mean, you know, we talked about, go back and listen to the red team

episode, uh, with Dwayne about, um.

How much he uses the backup system as a target, you know, uh, to, to, you know,

to infiltrate an environment, right?

So if you, if you, if you're not keeping up with the patches and you're

not doing all that sort sort of stuff, and no one's watching it, right?

You don't see weird stuff going on, right?

Um, if you're not seeing that stuff, then how are you going to know

when somebody's doing something weird with your backup system?

Um, the, Hmm, go ahead.

the other thing also is are people going and cleaning up agents

that exist on all the systems that it was previously backing up

Probably not, right?

right.

So those are still out there, and if they has connectivity, then

someone can misuse that as well.

Yeah, and I would say another big issue is cost.

If you still need this system to restore your data, you are

probably going to continue to pay for support for this system

so that you can continue to use it, support for the boxes, support for

the hardware, support for the disc, support for the tape support, for

the backup software you're paying.

All that support for a system that essentially is, is going unused

the vast majority of the time.

Yeah.

Um, and then, then the other thing I would say, and then we could segue

into, you know, um, my other thought, which is, um, the other thing is that

backup system, I've already said this once, but I just say in a different way

that backup systems are not designed.

For using it the way you want to use it, right?

You what you're looking for is the needle in the hay sky.

You're looking for the, the one file that you can't remember.

You can't remember what server it was on.

You can't remember what directory he was in.

You just know there was a spreadsheet that maybe you remember that the

spreadsheet was called Apollo, right?

But you don't remember what system it was on or whatever, right?

Um, or you're looking

that's, Spain may not even be around anymore,

Yeah.

And, and, and, you know, we live in America.

And in America, uh, you also can get sued and you can, if you've got that

backup system around, and the, the, the tapes are still even by the way,

even if the backup system is dead and what you have is a giant pile

of tapes, that data is discoverable right in, in, in the US at least.

, so and we don't do this a lot.

Um, you know, for those that are listening, if this is your

first, uh, podcast, uh, we don't do this a lot, but this is what

we ended up talking about today.

This is why the company that I work for exists, which is S2|DATA.

It's the one that you hear the promotion on it, you know the commercial

in the beginning of the thing.

Basically, we can take over that backup system.

We can allow you to continue to get access to that data without having to

do all the stuff that I talked about.

Because we have, in most cases, when I say MO cases, I mean like 98% of the backup

software products that are out there.

We have a way to access that data.

Um, without needing a backup software, and this is whether it's on tape or disk.

Um, and we can basically assume control of the, we can do either two things.

Either we can assume control of the media and put it in our vault.

We have an actual vault that, um, consists of a, of a bank that we acquired, right?

So we have an actual bank vault that we're now using as a tape vault and, um.

The, and we, we can, we can take it ownership of the media, uh, whether

it's disco tape, and then, uh, basically, uh, inventory it all with

this proprietary software we have called TRACS and get all the metadata and give

you a portal, a web portal that is in the cloud and you can search for and

tell us whatever you're looking for, and then we can send you the data.

But we can also do, uh, that's the, I would call that the Cadillac service

less expensive if you wanna do that as you maintain access to the media.

And then we, we give you some software that runs on a server that

needs physical access to the media.

And we do everything I just described.

It's just you managing the media.

Yeah.

And go ahead.

And I think one of the things that sort of implicitly comes about with

this solution, right, is the fact that that data is out of the cust,

at least the Cadillac version, it's out of the customer's environment,

right?

So if the customer gets hit version, it's out of the cyber attack,

right?

This is less data that is out there, less data that the

customer also has to manage and

worry about with

Yeah.

So the, the, the, um, in most cases, uh, this is data that's,

it's offline data, right?

And so literally there, there's no backup system that's running.

Um, there's, there's nothing to attack, whether it's in the

customer's environment or not.

In our, we're shutting down the net backup server, we're shutting down the, you know,

whatever server, um, uh, again, whatever product you've moved off of, and we

support all of the different products and.

Yeah.

Um, it's funny, you know, sometimes one day we're helping somebody

move from, uh, you know, let's say networker to, to Commvault.

Another day we're helping somebody from move from Commvault to networker, right?

Uh, basically the idea, the, the point is to solve the problems we talked about

a few minutes ago, kill that server.

Shut it down, get rid of that.

The, the, the, uh, the security risk and the cost risk of stop paying maintenance

for something you're not using anymore.

And then, um, uh, but don't lose access to the data.

And also, and, and you can access it for eDiscovery purposes or for

just simple, we need this file.

Um, but also what we can do is.

You could say, look, um, the only thing we really want are, um, exchange

backups, whatever it is, whatever it is that you're looking for.

The only thing we want is exchange backups.

So we can go through, scan the, uh, the backups, um, scan the

metadata and say, okay, these are the disks, these are the tapes.

That have this type of data and then allow you to delete everything else, right.

Which then reduces your risk.

Um, because again, if you have the data, you have to give it, right?

Which I think a lot of people don't realize keeping data around

is as risky as not having the data

Yeah.

Yeah.

You could argue it's, it's riskier.

I mean, unless you have a, a, um.

A regulatory reason to keep it.

And if you have a regulatory reason to keep exchange, that doesn't

mean you gotta keep everything else

Yep.

right.

You should have segregated, segregated it upfront, but you didn't.

And now you want to get rid of everything but exchange or whatever it is you want to

keep, we can, um, extract that data out.

And get and allow to delete everything else.

Right.

And we can, we can do that for you as well, right?

Yeah.

Um, but uh, yeah, so keeping a backup system around after some sort of

consolidation, like what we talked about in the first half, is a real risk.

It's expensive.

It's, um, the reward is very, very little.

The cost is very, very high.

And I think I should probably put this first, the cyber risk is very, very high.

And real.

And very, very real.

Yeah.

Um, and, uh, S2|DATA can definitely help with that.

If you're interested, um, um, you know, uh, check it out.

Uh, s two data.com s the number two, data.com.

Well, uh, all new Prasanna, I,

thanks for

So, no, this is a good episode.

Yeah, I'm, there's still, what, three more months left in the year.

I'm wondering if there's gonna be more consolidations

Well, it's time for, it's time when, um, when I start getting asked for

predictions for the, which is the worst thing I hate doing, but you know,

Yeah.

I predict there will be more data.

And, um, I, I predict that once again in 2025 there will be people that will lose

data because they weren't backing up their stuff, especially stuff in the cloud.

yeah.

And we will continue to bring it to you here on the backup wrap up.

That is a wrap,