Rubrik to hit enterprise with double whammy Rubrik CEO Bipul Sinha says there are two ways of looking at backup and recovery: loosely they are hardware or storage-centric and software-centric. The hardware-centric view was centred on Data Domain. Its arrays were connected directly to data sources, such as databases, and took a data dump from them, deduplicating it and …
That's what the whole interview sounds like to me.
Backup has to be one of the most difficult areas to play for a vendor primarily because the traditional vendors are so deeply entrenched into the enterprise and storage targets so integrated with them, it's extremely time consuming and very costly for a new vendor to displace them.
So in the end, if you can't beat them join them...
This guy's ego is astounding. Now Bipul thinks HE's Kevin Durant. A company that's only been around for 2? years, with something like $50-$75M run rate, claims they're the successor to multi-billion dollar firms with decades of experience. I look forward to their over-hyped IPO followed by the inevitable death spiral.
Did Veritas die? Usually when someone says I am the reincarnation, it implies someone/thing died!!! I am surprised that Chris would write this without fact checking the opinions and put some of his own thought and analysis into the piece. I don't call this analysis it just parroting. Sorry Chris!
If you read this quote first "in the cloud there is no storage" you have to wonder where a CEO who some thought was visionary is coming from. I am sorry but what is the cloud but someone else data center (which includes storage). I was hoping to be blown away with something good when I saw the title, but there is a lot of confusion in this and subtle attacks (again to analysis).
Implying that Veritas died already is funny (maybe dying but far from dead). Commvault not having a play in the cloud and doesn't generate metadata is just wrong. Actifio and Cohesity are HW centric and next generation Data Domain (also implying Data Domain died) is not even close to how I would define those two (unless Rubrik is in the same catagory). Comparing Actifio to Cohesity is also laughable since Actifio should have died and is only 1/6th of what Cohesity can do, not to mention something Rubrik CAN'T do the last time I checked. And then saying that Rubrik is a lot like Veeam while that might be the closest point I agree with, I disagree with saying that Rubrik is enterprise and Veeam is not, Veeam can scale if you have the right architect doing the implementation.
Something Rubrik does is mimic Veeam, Commvault and Cohesity (but simpler), delivering a HW centric implementation (like Dell/EMC and Cohesity). Rubrik is very far form having self-describing data. Actually I could see the comparison to Veritas only in that Rubrik’s thinking is a lot like Veritas’s stuck in the past with inflexibility, but I would never say that Veritas is self describing data unless you think tape comping back from Iron Mountain with a offset tar ball that packages a self described data source. I had hopes for Commvault and Veeam, that they would simplify and deliver a true hybrid cloud solution that act more like more a data management solution. My bet is on Cohesity to make that leap of true software defined data management but the jury is still out as they need to be proven in the market and they will also have their challenges in completing the self described data challenge.
Last point. I agree with Bipul one thing. Having self describing data is a key element to true data management but not something that will be delivered by a company like Rubrik. Self describing data is truly something that happens closer to the source data not on the backend but can be accomplished with tight integration at the software defined layer. Maybe this is a Bipul Sinha's way of redefining itself before they announce major changes in strategy to make up for slow growth and trouble meeting investor demands. I look forward to hearing what the truth is behind this confusing parroted interview. I would hope that Chris would do the great job on that announcement that he has done in the past and stay away from this. I have found great use in Chris' analysis in the past but this is far from that. Stick to the analysis and not reporting on an interview.
Unfortunately Rubrik talk the talk but their product can't walk the walk. I've had internal experience of their solution and their focus is all about cramming it with new features and not resolving some of the (critical) issues it contains. Call it what you will, backup, data management etc but if the data is corrupt or missing when you need it then it's not worth a handful of magic beans...
The technology is full of bugs, and they are always selling features 6+ months ahead of actual release.
It's blatantly obvious that Bipul is no more than a former VC trying borrow, market, inflate, and buy his way into short term success via IPO or acquisition. Disgusting. I can only imagine the internal culture as well.
I have interviewed with them a couple of years ago. Haven't met one guy in them who could give the clear picture of what they do. All were just the people who practiced algorithm interview questions.
Had seen a page long ago where they boast about recruiting people from Google, Facebook and Amazon.
https://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/27/how-ex-googlers-are-building-the-computing-future.html
Not sure, why they want to build themselves on this non-fact that a good company stamp is not the criteria to find good engineers. Anyways, eagerly waiting for their IPO or some thing else.
Re: Rubrik..Building a flashy GUI, attaching a cool bezel, and calling on VMware APIs to do backups is anything but differentiated. They built out a cool file system, but there are a dime a dozen scale out file systems in the market. Building true enterprise capabilities takes time, and building a HW business is anything but sexy. How many storage/server company have been wildly successful in the last 10 years? Zilch..
As for Datos IO- it's another niche product with a non-existent TAM. They will likely get eaten by one of the big guys.
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