With cyber crime on the rise and the amount of data businesses handle, it’s no wonder that data can be lost or stolen so easily. That’s why your business needs a business continuity plan which includes backup and disaster recovery software.
However, knowing exactly what kind of solution your business needs isn’t always so simple, especially when there are several solutions out there and you don’t always know exactly what you’re getting for your money.
As a business, you want to invest in solutions that not only make sense for your business, but also speed up processes. This is especially true of investing in backup and recovery — you need software and hardware which you can rely on to backup and restore your data efficiently.
That’s why we’ve written this article — we’re comparing two of the market’s top backup and recovery companies, Cohesity and Barracuda, who offer solutions that ensure your business can carry on as usual if data is ever lost.
Cohesity: The “Swiss Army Knife” of Modern Backup and Recovery
When it comes to data storage, hyper-convergence, and disaster recovery, Cohesity is the new kid on the block. But since Dr Mohit Aron founded it in 2013, the firm has garnered legendary status in IT departments across the world, thanks to the simplicity of its product and the helpful features it offers.
What makes the product unique is two things: the fact that a business can manage all of its data requirements from a single platform, and the range of features included in the basic service — everything from testing and development to deduplication. The idea is to bring all of a firm’s data together in a way that is useful to various stakeholders and reveal lost data. With Cohesity, a firm can make use of information it did not know it had.
Let’s say that you run a business with fragmented data. You have some information on local media, some on the cloud and some in alternative storage solutions. Collating all the data and putting them to good use manually can be a challenge. But with Cohesity, you can gather up all that information intelligently and then decide what you want to do with it: back it up, analyse it, or use it as part of your development cycle.
Barracuda: Out to Protect Your Data From the Forces of Darkness
Barracuda was initially founded to help protect companies against spam emails and malicious messages. But since then, the company has expanded its offering considerably, moving decidedly into the disaster recovery space.
Protecting company data has never been more critical for business continuity. Firms rely more than ever on their data to inform customer relationships, develop better marketing strategies and beat out the competition. Without it, it’s not hard to imagine operations grinding to a halt.
The focus of Barracuda’s data protection backup product is to protect firms against accidental and malicious data loss and minimise downtime. In the event of a disaster, firms can re-launch their virtual servers in the cloud and get back up and running in a matter of minutes while the IT department performs a post-mortem on what went wrong.
Cohesity vs Barracuda
Cohesity and Barracuda’s product are surprisingly similar. Both attempt to help firms manage their backup and disaster recovery from a single platform. Barracuda’s offering, for instance, allows IT managers and execs to monitor network traffic, deploy new data storage and configure storage requirements from a single console.
However, there are still some essential differences between both companies — one of which is that Cohesity allows you to bring together multiple functions into a single platform. Not only can you backup data from a range of cloud and local media storage devices (as you can with Barracuda), but you can also share files across the network, engage in testing and development, and perform analytics. Cohesity, therefore, allows firms to extract more value from their data and streamline their testing and development processes.
The way that Cohesity achieves this impressive feat is sophisticated. The process mainly relies on the central technology of hyper-convergence — or the ability to bring vast amounts of data together seamlessly under a single platform. Cohesity claims that it offers 70 per cent lower TCO than traditional silos. Cohesity also uses what it calls “unified global management” or a real-time, machine learning-driven dashboard providing data insights to users. Cohesity will scan for network issues and alert operators if there are problems in real time, helping to kill off disasters before they can develop.
Both Barracuda and Cohesity offer native cloud integration, making them ideal services for companies currently using Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure. Native cloud integration allows IT managers to perform testing and development, backups and archiving.
Where Barracuda shines, however, is in the area of security. The company correctly argues that in order to have effective data protection, an integrated platform is not enough: you need excellent security too. Barracuda suggests that users combine its data recovery package with Total Email Protection, a sophisticated security package which protects users with better archiving, firewalls and content security.
Barracuda’s other advantage is the quality of its customer support. The firm runs a 24/7 helpline for customers that has won several awards. There are no phone trees: you are immediately forwarded to an expert advisor with the skills to solve your problem.
Which is Better for Your Business?
Cohesity and Barracuda both offer radically different disaster recovery products. Barracuda is more targeted towards firms who are concerned about security. Thanks to the company’s history of developing security products, it should come as no surprise that it wants enterprises to go in this direction. Barracuda, therefore, is ideal for firms who are most at risk of data breaches and need something which goes beyond simple backup and storage.
Cohesity, on the other hand, is more suited to firms struggling to bring together their fragmented data silos. The platform makes it easy to integrate data from multiple sources — something which is a little more involved when using Barracuda. Cohesity provides you with a range of additional tools not available on Barracuda and allows you to share documents within the platform itself.
Making a decision about which product to use can be a challenge and depends heavily on the specifics of your company. For this reason, many enterprises choose to consult with professionals with the knowledge and insight to help them make the best choice. If you’re not accustomed to these products, it’s often hard to know which is the best for your company’s circumstances.
It’s worth pointing out that many other factors need to be considered when building a disaster recovery plan. Having the right software is a good first step, but you also need the right hardware and business processes in place if you want to maximise your capacity to maintain business continuity. Thus, choosing a between Barracuda and Cohesity is only a small part of the process. Specialists can help you build a total solution.
