Simon Taylor, the founder and CEO of data protection-as-a-service provider HYCU, recently met with Acceleration Economy analyst Tom Smith. Taylor addressed a range of topics including HYCU’s involvement in the recent AWS Re:invent conference, ransomware, hybrid/multi-cloud drivers, and the outlook for 2023.
This episode of the Cloud Wars Horizon Minute is sponsored by Cloud Wars Horizon Demo Day, which took place on December 15th. Get a hands-on view of the future of AI, automation, and cybersecurity solutions, delivered by experts explaining the business value of their technology. Click here to watch the event on-demand for free.
Highlights
01:11 — Addressing major takeaways from the AWS conference, Taylor says “people are back, Covid is certainly over in the United States.” He’s never seen more enthusiasm at an event and said the AWS team did a “terrific job” in creating that interest. There was an enormous amount of test and dev vendors visible at the show — and that speaks volumes about true cloud adoption: Taylor says that eople have this assumption that we’re already at the top of that bell curve in terms of cloud adoption, but the cloud party has only just begun.
01:52 — The marketplace is starting to say that when you start to migrate to the cloud, when you actually put production workloads in the cloud, then all of the same fundamental requirements that you have on-premises need to also be taken care of with your cloud-based data. This includes things like data protection.
02:58 — The scourge of ransomware is top of mind for a lot of people. Looking back to 2020, there was a massive flight to the cloud, as companies were undergoing digital transformations and migrating data to the cloud. However, we also saw a massive increase in the number of ransomware attacks.
03:25 — In 2020, many speculated that there was a ransomware attack every 16 seconds. Now, it’s believed that they occur every 11 seconds; customers are really conscious of this increasing risk and are actively looking at ways to manage and deal with it. The ransomware problem has now been escalated to the board level for most companies.
04:23 — Taylor compares ransomware to mental health considerations: If you think back 20 years ago, people were embarrassed to talk openly about mental health challenges, and then, of course, they don’t get the help they need. This is similar to what is happening with ransomware attacks. The more straightforward we are with ourselves about the real threat of ransomware attacks, the more we, as an economy and marketplace, will be able to put barriers in place to stop malicious actors. Then, we will be able to get back up and running faster than ever before.
06:52 — HYCU developed the “R-Score,” which will evaluate your organization’s ability to recover from a ransomware attack. It scores at 0 to 1,000 just like a credit report and actually provides you with specific actionable areas that you can address within your own organization. So, when you’re attacked, you can get that data back and resume operations faster.
08:05 — There were important changes in HYCU products in the past year. Whether you’re using Haiku Protege on-premises, in a hybrid environment, or in the public cloud, HYCU has built-in threat detection. It can see when encrypted data is being shuffled into your data set, enabling you to actually stop it. Being able to stop attacks is really important: Letting you know that there is something that looks like malware and looks inappropriate in your environment allows you to be more proactive and recover more quickly. HYCU encrypts all of your data. Additionally, HYCU added write once read many (WORM) for immutable storage capabilities.
11:33 — Referencing the multi-cloud/hybrid cloud trend, Taylor says customers are now realizing that different clouds are actually better at doing different things. Google Cloud has done a phenomenal job with artificial intelligence with large data sets, with the ability to add analytics tools on top of that. Microsoft has an entire ecosystem of partners. Customers are looking to split workloads across the major hyperscalers and force them to compete for business. From day one, HYCU said multi-cloud is going to be in the direction that people will gravitate toward. Further, HYCU suggested that there needs to be one framework that really does “rule them all” — which HYCU did with its approach to its purpose-built backup-as-a-service.
14:11 — Highlights of 2022 include the “FED” and “SLED” businesses being “off the charts successful.” (SLED refers to state, city, and county governments).
14:33 — From a technology perspective, HYCU just launched for AWS; a premium service for DevOps teams so that they can turn on a simple version, completely free of charge — and it’s free for life. HYCU doesn’t want anyone to be unprotected. HYCU is providing that free offering for DevOps teams so they can stop trying to script their own backup.
15:38 — Looking ahead into 2023, Taylor predicts it’s not going to be without its challenges, considering the energy crisis in Europe, geopolitical forces, and the ransomware crisis. HYCU needs to help customers ensure they’re protecting themselves.
16:42 — Tom asks whether HYCU can sustain recent growth rates (in the range of 150% per year).
“Absolutely. We can sustain the growth,” reports Taylor.
17:05 — Discussing data sprawl, Taylor says the average mid-market company has its data in 175 different data silos; companies cannot afford to have 175 backup products to protect them. So, the hybrid multi-cloud architecture is not a nice-to-have — it’s a must-have. It’s a really challenging time for the consumer. The average downtime from a ransomware attack is 16 days — imagine a hospital that can’t get its records for 16 days. HYCU gets customers back up and running in as little as 16 minutes. From that perspective, this isn’t just about getting the new, cool technology anymore; it’s about saving lives. It’s about protecting people and ensuring the viability of all customers.
20:15 — HYCU is cutting down the silos into one single pane of glass, making it easier than ever before for customers to protect themselves, their customers, their partners, and their employees.
More HYCU Insights:
- HYCU Simplifies Enterprise and Public Multi-Cloud Security and Data Management
- Multi-Cloud Backup Provider HYCU Adds $53 Million in New VC Funding
- HYCU Adds a Data Protection ‘Free Tier’ For AWS Customers
