Delivering modern data protection with cloud scale backup from Cobalt Iron and IBM
Customer Company Size
Mid-size Company
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- IBM Spectrum Protect
- IBM Spectrum Storage
- Cobalt Iron ADP v3.2
Tech Stack
- Cloud Computing
- Data Protection
- Backup Solutions
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Cost Savings
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
Applicable Industries
- Software
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- Data Science Services
About The Customer
Based near Kansas City, Cobalt Iron has over 20 years’ experience with IBM® Spectrum Storage™ technologies. As a leading developer of cloud scale data protection solutions, Cobalt Iron has worked with IBM for three years to create and support its own software-defined enterprise cloud backup solution. The company has been IBM Spectrum Protect experts for more than 20 years. Cobalt Iron developed a hybrid cloud approach to data protection using IBM Spectrum Protect as a core embedded application.
The Challenge
Organizations are struggling to modernize their legacy data protection environments in the face of growing demands around new infrastructure, new applications, and budget consolidation. Virtualization and modern application development processes have significantly outgrown legacy backup architectures. In response, infrastructure teams have created multiple backup solution types to handle the varying SLAs (performance, scale, cost) required by their business sponsors. However, the sheer number and variety of solutions in this uncontrolled expansion creates huge amounts of work, threatening to overwhelm the IT team in many organizations. Today, developers may add new applications and virtual server instances by the hundreds per day without accounting for the restrictions of the existing backup infrastructure. They leverage the cloud for immediate compute and storage resources, yet rarely communicate succinctly with corporate IT to ensure that the appropriate data protection services are in place.
The Solution
Cobalt Iron uses IBM Spectrum Protect to run millions of monthly backup jobs with up to 99.9 percent success rates—helping support rapid growth in customer backups at highly economical pricing. IBM Spectrum Protect is a key component of Cobalt Iron backup solutions. Spectrum Protect enables Cobalt Iron software-defined backup to protect practically any environment—including Microsoft Windows, IBM AIX® and Linux—either from physical machines or virtualization platforms such as VMware or Microsoft Hyper-V. The Cobalt Iron solution delivers two distinct layers of backup capabilities. The first is the management layer, which delivers a clear view of all data protection policies, activities, operations, scheduling, and reporting. The management layer also delivers on-going updates, upgrades, monitoring, and analytics. The second layer, Performance & Scale, delivers the engine for enterprise backup and recovery acceleration, and provides a bridge to cloud architecture and economics.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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