Clumio Introduces Cloud-Native Amazon RDS Data Protection

'In the long term, we'll go after any workload whether it's on-premises, in the cloud or SaaS. And we'll go after every major cloud,' says Clumio founder and CEO Poojan Kumar.

Cloud-native data protection startup Clumio Tuesday expanded its application-focused data protection capabilities with new technology for protecting Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) workloads.

The new Clumio Backup-as-a-Service for RDS offering follows the late April introduction of cloud-native data protection for Microsoft 365 data, said Chadd Kenney, vice president and chief technologist for the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company. The company in November also introduced Backup as a Service for Amazon EBS data.

The new RDS-focused service includes a free version for short-term retention of RDS data as well as a licensed version for long-term retention, Kenney told CRN.

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The free version allows for management of data snapshots for operational recovery that are stored in the customer's AWS account for up to 35 days, Kenney said. “The licensed version provides air-gap protection ensuring data is stored outside the customer’s AWS account so that it cannot be accessed by bad actors internal or external,” he said.

For longer-term retention of Amazon RDS data, the new service has licenses for one-year and seven-year retention, Kenney said. "To restore data, customers don't need to restore an entire snapshot," he said. "We provide a simple query tool to find and restore just the information needed."

The new service includes point-in-time recovery, in-account snapshots and enterprise-level snapshot orchestration, Kenney said. Its long-term retention and record-level management also allow exporting of data for legal holds and eDiscovery, he said.

Clumio's technology was built native in the cloud, said the company's founder and CEO, Poojan Kumar.

"It can take snapshots out of a customer's account, move them to air-gap protection, and then manage them," Kumar told CRN. "Everyone else only does snapshot orchestration."

Clumio's cloud-native data protection technology has proven to be well-aligned with solution provider cloud requirements, said John Barnes, vice president of sales at Groupware Technology and Computing, a Campbell, Calif.-solution provider that worked with Clumio since before it exited stealth mode last year.

"When we started looking at Clumio, it was aligned well with our cloud practice, especially AWS," Barnes told CRN. "We are always looking for ways to optimize costs, and Clumio works very well. And having a vendor partner to back up AWS data is important. There are other vendors who can do it. But Clumio is the only cloud-native way to do it today."

The new Clumio Backup-as-a-Service for RDS gives customers the ability to back up and restore data outside their environments, Barnes said.

"It can restore and do data recovery more efficiently than just using AWS' native tools," he said. "It adds elegance to the recovery process. There are many ways to back up AWS data, and a lot of customers use AWS' native tools. Those tools do a fine job. But if you are looking for ways to do it better while reducing costs, Clumio is the way to go."

Educating customers on why they should move from AWS' native data protection tools takes time, but Groupware has found that its billing system for customers is a good place to start, Barnes said.

"We can go to customers, and have discussions and consulting with them on how to reduce costs," he said. "We can show them how to build a better, safer environment within AWS."

Clumio came out of stealth in August 2019 with a channel-only strategy, and has since based its product strategy on how customers and their channel partners manage their IT, Kumar said.

"We came to market protecting VMware data on premises, then moved to VMware data in the cloud, and then AWS data," he said. "This year it was Microsoft 365 data, and now AWS RDS. In the long term, we'll go after any workload whether it's on-premises, in the cloud, or SaaS. And we'll go after every major cloud."

Clumio will likely move to protecting data on Azure some time next year, with Google-based data to come later, Kumar said.

The company's channel focus is on signing forward-looking solution providers with cloud experience, Kumar said. That seems to be working, he said, given that 25 percent of all deal registrations partners brought to the company in May were for 100 percent cloud opportunities, he said.