Cohesity deepens Google Cloud tie-up for AI and cyber-resilience

Cohesity is strengthening its partnership with Google Cloud, expanding its data protection portfolio, widening its AI capabilities, and adding new data sovereignty and cybersecurity features.

The companies announced an initial batch of enhancements in April, integrating Cohesity’s Gaia GenAI search assistant with Google’s Gemini models and Agentspace, tapping Google Threat Intelligence, and working with Mandiant on incident response and cloud-based recovery. Now they are extending that collaboration with a broader set of services and deeper platform integration.

Cohesity CEO and president Sanjay Poonen said: “This collaboration with Google Cloud represents a bold step forward in redefining how enterprises protect, secure, and gain insight from their data, while reframing sovereignty from a regulatory burden into a source of trust and advantage.”

Cohesity customers moving partially or wholly to Google Cloud will find Cohesity there as they move, which helps Google build its cloud business. And Google Cloud users get more access to Cohesity AI, data protection, and security offerings, which helps Cohesity grow its business.

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said: “By combining Google Cloud’s AI and security innovations with Cohesity’s cyber-resilience foundations, we’re enabling enterprises to accelerate AI transformation while building a more resilient, compliant future for customers everywhere in the world.”

All components of the Cohesity Data Cloud are available through the Google Cloud Marketplace. Google Cloud customers can use Cohesity’s DataProtect offering to protect Google Compute Engine, Google Cloud Storage, and multiple databases, with immutable backups stored in Google Cloud or their own infrastructure. This will be expanded, with support for the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), BigQuery, and numerous other data services, along with enhanced regional storage options.

AI

There is a Google Cloud-hosted version of Gaia, Cohesity’s natural language AI assistant, available now. Customers with unstructured data can already use Google’s Gemini models with Gaia, both on-premises and in the cloud. Cohesity plans to embed Google Cloud’s Vertex AI Search capabilities into Gaia “to deliver instant, grounded answers to structured user queries, accompanied by relevant citations drawn from source files stored in Cohesity’s immutable, AI-ready data lake.”

There is also a planned integration with Google’s new Gemini Enterprise agentic platform. This will enable secure access to the historical enterprise data in the Cohesity Data Cloud from AI agents made by Google and its partners.

Cybersecurity

Cohesity’s Data Cloud uses Google Threat Intelligence to help customers detect, hunt, respond to, and eradicate the malware threats against their data stores. Its CERT (Cyber Event Response Team) works with Google Cloud’s Mandiant Incident Response team to support mutual clients in recovering from cyber incidents.

There will be deeper Cohesity Data Cloud platform integration with Google Security Operations to connect and help automate security operations workflows, surfacing potential threats lurking in backup data and reducing response times. A planned cyber-resilience SaaS offering, featuring cloud-isolated recovery from Google Cloud, is expected to help customers recover from cyberattacks.

Sovereignty

Google has already certified Cohesity as a Google Cloud Ready – Regulated & Sovereignty Solutions partner, meaning users can deploy the Cohesity Data Cloud within the Google Cloud Data Boundary to meet data residency and sovereign control requirements.

By porting its Fort Knox immutable cyber-vaulting offering to Google Cloud, Cohesity will enable a Fort Knox vault to be isolated within specific geographic regions. It will also provide policy-based controls to ensure vaults remain stored and recoverable only within approved jurisdictions.

Overall, Cohesity’s widened Google Cloud partnership will include new joint go-to-market programs, co-selling initiatives, and integrated marketing campaigns.

Google Cloud has partnerships with other cybersecurity and data protection vendors, such as Rubrik and Commvault. They don’t appear to cover as much ground as this Cohesity deal. Cohesity also has a strategic collaboration partnership with AWS and a relationship with Azure.