Former Commvault Vets Lead Startup Parablu’s Goal to Disrupt SaaS Backup
… automatically protected in storage that they’ve been allocated. In a lot of cases over a three-to-five-year period, if you look at our total cost of ownership around backup, almost 70% of the cost is storage cost, which we and essentially eliminate that completely.”
De Meno said this is an important differentiator because it can use OneDrive and the M365 stack to create “a secure smart storage mechanism, which would be probably the lowest cost of entry for storage.” Because there are no egress costs when using OneDrive or Google Drive, that will also reduce cloud storage expenses, he added. Parablu also uses Azure Files as a storage target.
Expanding Channel Presence
For Microsoft partners, De Meno noted that Parablu will offer another option for them to meet their cloud consumption quotas. Besides plans to deepen its Microsoft partnership, De Meno emphasized that Parablu also supports AWS, Google Cloud and IBM Cloud.
Parablu will soon announce the hiring of a former channel exec from Druva, tasked with expanding the company’s channel ecosystem.
Biplab Chaudhuri, CEO of PTS Consulting Services, a Parablu partner, likes what he sees.
“When we moved to cloud services, we started getting a lot of small-to-midsize companies calling us just for Office 365 licenses, which come with one terabyte of OneDrive,” Chaudhuri said. “And typically, they’re saving their files and their Adobe Photoshop into OneDrive but not realizing the risk that it is not encrypted. That’s when we looked at the Parablu solution. It’s a very simple use case.”
Data Mining Potential
Besides its approach to backup and ransomware protection, De Meno said he sees other potential in BluVault and BluSync technology. For partners, that’s important, because backup and recovery is becoming a commodity, he said.
“It’s fairly simple to create a backup copy. But if you can index that data, and then let people do something with it in a secure, cyber protected way, that’s one of the next steps of evolution coming to our industry,” De Meno said. “Luckily, Anand and I took a leadership position in the industry many years ago, and now we’re going to take another stab at moving it along by giving customers more value in that data.”
While that includes endpoint data from Microsoft 365, De Meno said it will also encompass data from other sources that people constantly collect from various feeds.
“A lot of that data is just coming in, but isn’t being stored, and not necessarily being used as optimally as it could,” he said. “I know that is an area Microsoft would like to focus on with partners that can help deliver that — by using primarily Azure infrastructure to deliver those capabilities.”
Prahlad said he wants to leverage AI and machine learning to improve data classification.
“Using mechanisms like natural language processing and machine learning, we can start making better sense out of that data and start classifying how the data gets managed, based on policies, etc.,” Prahlad said.
Under the Radar
In the crowded space of data protection providers, Parablu, though around for some time, is still unknown to some. Parablu points to a long list of customers on its website including Finisar, Forward Air, Panasonic, Reva University in India, Royal Orchid Hotels, Sony Picture Networks, Starbucks and Tata AIG Insurance.
Parablu is starting to get some attention. In December, reviews and comparison site SourceForge awarded Parablu as Fall 2021 Top Performer. In February, Parablu launched a backup-as-a-service (BaaS) version of BluVault managed and hosted in Microsoft Azure. Parablu last month said it achieved ISO 27001:2013 certification, required for many public sector procurements.
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