The News: Cohesity is migrating its Data Cloud platform to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), leveraging Red Hat’s open source technology and support to enhance data security and management. Read the full press release on the Red Hat website.
Cohesity Data Cloud on RHEL
Analyst Take: Cohesity Data Cloud is a fundamental technology that addresses data fragmentation issues, primarily by indexing data across multiple sources. It underpins a variety of Cohesity data protection and management services that exist under Helios, Cohesity’s unified management platform. Services within the Data Cloud umbrella include DataProtect, FortKnox, DataHawk, SmartFiles, and SiteContinuity. Between these services, the Cohesity Data Cloud provides a wide range of functionality covering data protection, ransomware recovery, security, file and object storage, data classification, data governance, and business continuity.
Transitioning Data Cloud to the RHEL operating system (OS) from CentOS Linux 7 marks another step by Cohesity to address the operational complexities and security challenges inherent in protecting and managing data across on-premises data centers, public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and software as a service (SaaS), and edge devices.
Specifically, RHEL is a hardened, hybrid cloud-ready OS that will allow Cohesity to maintain its focus on consistency across hybrid and heterogeneous IT environments, a crucial feature as hybrid and multicloud strategies become ubiquitous. In addition, and the bigger part of the announcement from The Futurum Group’s perspective, is the customer support, engineering, and security and incident response headcount resources that Red Hat will provide. These individuals will offload the burden of maintaining and patching the OS and of identifying and addressing OS code vulnerabilities, from Cohesity. This approach could give Cohesity an edge from the standpoint of faster response to potential security vulnerabilities. Additionally, we anticipate that Cohesity will be able to further increase its engineering focus on innovating and enhancing CX, when it comes to features and capabilities around data backup, recovery, and management, as well as overall cyber-resiliency for customer data.
Looking Ahead
Cohesity, like its peers in the data protection space, has been focused on innovating for competitive edge around cyber-resiliency – investing in such areas as data security, data recoverability, and the ability to detect data breaches resulting from cyberattacks and other malicious activity. In addition to providing a proven and broadly adopted, enterprise-grade platform, Red Hat will provide the support infrastructure that is increasingly critical to address OS vulnerabilities as quickly as possible, while allowing Cohesity to continue moving the needle in the development of its own platform at the pace required by today’s fast-moving and innovative attackers. Additionally, with Red Hat being an IBM company, The Futurum Group notes that this announcement builds on the relationship that Cohesity announced in March to integrate Cohesity DataProtect and Helios with several IBM technologies to protect hybrid cloud environments. In this vein, it follows Cohesity’s efforts to collaborate closely with partners to augment its cyber-resiliency capabilities.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
Other Insights from The Futurum Group:
Red Hat Announces GA of RHEL 9.2 and 8.8: A New Era of Hybrid Cloud Computing
Author Information
Regarded as a luminary at the intersection of technology and business transformation, Steven Dickens is the Vice President and Practice Leader for Hybrid Cloud, Infrastructure, and Operations at The Futurum Group. With a distinguished track record as a Forbes contributor and a ranking among the Top 10 Analysts by ARInsights, Steven's unique vantage point enables him to chart the nexus between emergent technologies and disruptive innovation, offering unparalleled insights for global enterprises.
Steven's expertise spans a broad spectrum of technologies that drive modern enterprises. Notable among these are open source, hybrid cloud, mission-critical infrastructure, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and FinTech innovation. His work is foundational in aligning the strategic imperatives of C-suite executives with the practical needs of end users and technology practitioners, serving as a catalyst for optimizing the return on technology investments.
Over the years, Steven has been an integral part of industry behemoths including Broadcom, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), and IBM. His exceptional ability to pioneer multi-hundred-million-dollar products and to lead global sales teams with revenues in the same echelon has consistently demonstrated his capability for high-impact leadership.
Steven serves as a thought leader in various technology consortiums. He was a founding board member and former Chairperson of the Open Mainframe Project, under the aegis of the Linux Foundation. His role as a Board Advisor continues to shape the advocacy for open source implementations of mainframe technologies.
With a focus on data security, protection, and management, Krista has a particular focus on how these strategies play out in multi-cloud environments. She brings approximately 15 years of experience providing research and advisory services and creating thought leadership content. Her vantage point spans technology and vendor portfolio developments; customer buying behavior trends; and vendor ecosystems, go-to-market positioning, and business models. Her work has appeared in major publications including eWeek, TechTarget and The Register.
Prior to joining The Futurum Group, Krista led the data protection practice for Evaluator Group and the data center practice of analyst firm Technology Business Research. She also created articles, product analyses, and blogs on all things storage and data protection and management for analyst firm Storage Switzerland and led market intelligence initiatives for media company TechTarget.
