Earlier this month SolarWinds spin-out N-able announced Cove Data Protection, a cloud-first data protection-as-a-service (DPaaS) product combining disaster recovery and long-term backup retention. We were curious as to how this related to N-able’s existing backup services.
Update – William Blair analyst Jason Ader’s view added; May 16, 2022.
Cove Data Protection includes data protection for servers, workstations, and Microsoft 365. It offers the ability to back up as often as every 15 minutes, moving up to 60x less data compared to local-first backup for improved recovery point and recovery time objectives. There is also a standby virtual server image in the partner’s location of choice for fast and flexible restore options (now in preview/early access). It has fully managed cloud storage, with 30 datacenters to keep backups stored in regions for data sovereignty.
Stefan Voss, VP of Product Management, told us: “We’re not reinventing the wheel and that is a good thing. Our architecture is well positioned for the current industry trends: IT skills shortage, customers’ journey to the cloud, and the ever-evolving threat landscape. Cove builds on N-able’s existing backup architecture which manages to move data from source to cloud up to 60x more effectively than traditional backup solutions. This transformational difference makes cloud-first data protection viable.
“With Cove, we are now combining this cloud-first data protection architecture with business class DRaaS tools like Standby Image. Unlike on-premises first data protection with optional cloud copies, Cove Data Protection reduces the attack surface by storing backup copies offsite by default. Customers are also not at risk due to the backup infrastructure sitting on the same network as the sources it backs up. Instead we offer the automation to place standby images on customer-provided infrastructure of choice. This offers the customers a lot more restore flexibility, the ability to re-use existing infrastructure, and shorten recovery times.
“All of these workflows are centrally managed via the multi-tenant SaaS Control Plane.”
N-able made Voss VP of Product Management in November 2021. Previously he worked at Dell Technologies as senior director of product management, and CPO for Cyber Recovery and Data Protection software, having joined EMC in 2003.
William Blair analyst Jason Ader writes; “In the past, DPaaS was mainly a cross-sell motion for N-able, but management believes that Cove presents a significant new land opportunity for both MSPs and mid-market customers on account of its significant technical differentiation (namely, its highly efficient, cloud-first, non-image-based architecture and business continuity feature set).”
The number of companies offering DPaaS is growing: Clumio, Cohesity, Commvault (Metallic) Druva, HYCU, Veeam, and Veritas for starters. Sorting out which one to use is going to be a complex exercise.
