If there’s anything that years of consulting with enterprise clients has taught me, it’s that the world of technology continues to accelerate through iteration after iteration of new architectures, models, and solutions at a pace that is difficult to grasp. We previously lived in a world where all applications resided on bare metal, and waterfall projects took years to release. Now, the rules of small steps and cloud-first are percolating throughout the minds of cloud architects, driving innovation.

As Rubrik’s Chief Technologist, I’ve applied a lens to my experiences as an architect to really scratch the surface on this whole cloud data management ideal in an exploratory series of blog posts. In a nutshell, being cloud native, entirely API-driven, infinitely scalable, having instant data access, and, most importantly, being software fueled are the ingredients necessary for moving the needle in the stagnant world of data protection.

The Road Traveled Thus Far
Two years later, one only has to look so far as incumbent solutions using yet another coat of paint to hide long-tailed technology debts to see the short, dismal future ahead when compared to newer ways of thinking. By wiping the technology slate clean in an effort to make backup and recovery sexy, Rubrik has ignited a global wildfire of interest as companies of all shapes and sizes realize that an API-fueled, policy-driven platform is actually within their grasp to underline real-world, strategic initiatives. Combining that vision with tools such as ServiceNow, vRealize Suite, Puppet, and other SaaS offerings is a sweet, sweet melody for legions of automation engineers.

 

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With our recent announcement of the Alta release, you’ll begin to see how each generation of the product furthers the vision and validity of Cloud Data Management for enterprises who are looking to build something efficient, automated, and cloud native for their business use cases. They have a thirst to leverage both private and public cloud resources in the simplest, most intelligent manner possible.

From Data Center Workloads to Cloud-Native Applications
With the ability to deploy Rubrik as a either a physical Brik, virtual Edge appliance, or Cloud Cluster, the question of topology restraints have been evaporated and software can be brought as close to the applications and data as desired. One can simply build a fabric for ingesting, cataloging, protecting, and spinning up applications, at scale, while also providing critical backup, recovery, archive, and disaster recovery capabilities. Additionally, the Alta release adds the ability to run on-prem applications in the public cloud using simplified workflows or a few mouse clicks.

Also, according to Eric Shanks in his summer Tech Talks, even the requirements set forth by mature enterprise clients have been addressed in an extremely short time period as we handle “all the boring … backup stuff” while also “starting to inch into cloud to do even more interesting things.” High praise to see design experts like Eric and others get excited about backup and recovery because these folks understand that the value is beyond these requirements. Also, this reaction is not abnormal; engineers who see Rubrik in action quickly have the “lightbulb moment” when compared to the legacy, build-it-yourself architectures.