Veritas Technologies announced an array of new 360 data management capabilities for Veritas and Microsoft Azure customers. These innovations empower customers to capitalize on the flexibility and agility offered by Azure, and benefit from data management capabilities powered by Veritas that help reduce costs and ensure compliance, increase visibility and simplify workload migration. Customers can extract more value from their data, which helps them achieve better business outcomes.

This announcement advances a strategic partnership between Microsoft and Veritas and coincides with the rapid adoption of hybrid and public cloud environments. According to Gartner, "the worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 18 percent in 2017 to total $246.8 billion, up from $209.2 billion in 2016."¹ However, as customers accelerate migration to the cloud, the need to manage data in the cloud has never been more critical.

"Joint Veritas and Microsoft customers have the best of both worlds: the flexibility and agility of Azure cloud combined with the trusted toolset of the Veritas 360 data management platform," said Mark Russinovich, CTO, Microsoft Azure at Microsoft Corp. "Customers can use these offerings to optimize for hybrid cloud environments as they get more value from their data."

Delivering the full spectrum of 360 data management capabilities for the hybrid cloud

This announcement includes new technology integrations that enhance joint customers' business continuity and disaster-recovery readiness, enable hybrid cloud scale-out storage optimization, and dramatically increase customers' ability to visualize data across disparate sources. Unless otherwise referenced, all of the integrations listed below are generally available today.

• Business resiliency that is predictable and automated: With the Veritas Resiliency Platform (VRP), customers can monitor and easily failover/failback multi-tiered applications to and from Azure with a single click. This enables organizations to use the cloud as a recovery target, increasing disaster recovery readiness while reducing the cost and complexity associated with on-premises facilities. Organizations can also rely on VRP to provide predictable recoveries through automated and non-disruptive recovery testing.

• Software-defined storage optimized for cost and high-performance: With Veritas Access, customers can automatically migrate old data to the cloud for cost-effective long-term storage, or easily mix on-premises and Azure cloud storage to create a single scale-out file system for efficient storage management with no disruption.

• Data visibility that enables informed decision making: With the Veritas Information Map connector for Azure, customers can get a real-time picture of their unstructured data stored on Microsoft Azure Blob Storage and Microsoft Azure File Storage. Once organizations know what data they have, they can make informed data retention, migration and deletion decisions. Customers can also take advantage of a host of other previously announced Veritas data management offerings to enhance their experience on Microsoft Azure, whether they're a large enterprise or a small to midsized business. Unless otherwise noted, these integrations are available now.

• Data protection optimized for the cloud:

  • With Veritas NetBackup, the company's flagship unified data protection solution for the enterprise, customers can migrate and protect data stored on the Azure platform. As part of Veritas NetBackup 8.1, announced and is available this quarter, customers can use powerful deduplication technology to help reduce backup times and lower long-term data storage costs. Customers can also leverage their NetBackup investment and backup and recovery infrastructure as a foundation to deliver 360 data management.

  • With Veritas Backup Exec, midsized and smaller businesses enjoy a seamless integration with Azure for easy backup to, from or in the cloud. Backup Exec provides a single platform and console across virtual, physical and cloud environments to optimize customers' productivity and includes deduplication to Azure for improved performance with reduced cost.

  • With Veritas CloudPoint, customers can easily orchestrate Azure-based snapshots for quick recovery in the cloud. The CloudPoint interface provides a clean, central location from which they can manage snapshot operations across a variety of on-premises and cloud-specific technologies.

• Workload migration that provides predictable outcomes: With Veritas CloudMobility, customers can safely and securely migrate complex workloads from their data center to the cloud of their choice—including Azure—with a single click. CloudMobility also provides pre-migration testing, giving customers advance knowledge of how an application will perform in the cloud.

• Archiving technology that is key to data retention: With Veritas Enterprise Vault, customers can use archiving technology to assign retention policies, do rapid search and streamline eDiscovery requests. Organizations can migrate archived content to Microsoft Azure Blob storage or transition from Enterprise Vault on-premises to Enterprise Vault running on Azure.

"The desire to incorporate Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) into the enterprise IT strategy is abundantly clear," said Mike Palmer, executive vice president and chief product officer, Veritas. "However, data management is critical to helping customers ensure compliance and protection of their data while extracting maximum value from it. That's why this partnership has been so well-received by customers."