Catalogic partners with Backblaze to tackle ransomware and tape maintenance
Data protection vendor Catalogic has turned to Backblaze as a cloud destination to counter the twin evils of ransomware and expensive tape maintenance costs.
The two companies unveiled a partnership today that will see Catalogic’s DPX data protection suite serve up Backblaze’s B2 Cloud Storage as an “infinitely scalable” backup target. DPX provides block-level protection for physical and virtual servers, with Catalogic claiming it can reduce backup time by 90 per cent.
At the same time, Catalogic’s CloudCasa data protection, backup, and recovery service will support Backblaze B2 as a “low cost and secure” backup destination. The CloudCasa service is aimed at protecting Kubernetes, cloud databases, and cloud-native applications. In both cases, Backblaze will appear as an object storage option for backups.
The companies are pitching the tie-up as offering customers a massive speed premium over traditional backup, while also delivering a 75 percent reduction in costs compared to the competition.
That competition includes tape, with the newly minted partners’ statement saying: “Using Backblaze B2 for tape replacement… provides a significant cost reduction opportunity.” The DPX service uses S3 Object Lock to ensure backup and archive data is immutable.
Despite the focus on immutability, both companies are in the midst of rapid change.
Catalogic offloaded its ECX copy data management business to IBM last year to focus on cloud protection and security. The move followed its entry into Kubernetes persistent volume backup in 2020 with the launch of CloudCasa, putting it up against heavyweights including Commvault, Dell, Dura, Pure, and Veeam.
Backblaze was founded in 2007 and IPO’d last November with the aim of capitalizing on what CEO Gleb Budman described as a future “built on independent clouds.” Its most recent figures showed losses rising faster than revenues as it looked to grab a slice of the potentially enormous cloud backup market. In January, it partnered with Kasten by Veeam to offer an expanded ransomware protection and backup service.
