Most providers in most technology fields use comparable architectures when designing and developing their respective products. However, every so often, an architecture emerges that forces providers to change how they must design and deliver their products going forward. Its impact becomes even more pronounced when it stands to shorten product life cycles and hasten customer adoption.
HYCU’s R-Cloud release represents such a moment in DBaaS, PaaS, and SaaS data protection. It now makes centralized enterprise data protection solutions for all these as-a-service platforms an affordable, practical, and viable option.
The Rise of As-a-Service Data Protection
As-a-service platforms represent one of the great megatrends sweeping through IT in all size organizations. It is for good reason. Organizations get the benefits they want most: access and use of the application they want to use. They simultaneously eliminate the backend headaches they hate such as hardware and software fixes, patches, upgrades, and maintenance.
Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace represent the two most well-known and visible platforms that many organizations already use. However, those two represent just the tip of the iceberg. DropBox, Quickbooks Online, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and many, many more (10,000+) exist for use in the cloud and on-premises.
The Basic As-a-Service Data Protection Gap
Unfortunately, there’s a catch with all of them. All these as-a-service platforms, whether they offer database-as-a-service (DBaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and software-as-a-service (SaaS) have a basic problem. They do not offer a robust enterprise data protection service.
Most providers host their as-a-service offering and production data in highly available data centers. They then secure this data behind firewalls and with anti-virus software. These as-a-service offerings may also provide limited backup options, such as a Recycle Bin, to back up data.
However, organizations typically need more robust data protection offerings. These products must handle events where data hosted in an as-a-service platform gets accidentally, purposefully, or maliciously deleted. This latter case may include deletion and/or encryption of all data in the as-a-service offering’s Recycle Bin. If this happens, organizations are on their own to recover the data.
This stems from as-a-service providers adhering to the Shared Responsibility Model. Service providers deliver basic levels of data protection, backup, and recovery services. But when this model fails, especially when a ransomware attack occurs, it ultimately falls to each organization to protect and recover its data stored with each provider.
The HUGE As-a-Service Data Protection Gap
This data protection gap that exists for each as-a-service offering used by an organization already represents a signification challenge. However, this gap becomes HUGE when any organization considers all the as-a-service offerings it already uses or plans to use. These huge challenges show up in the following four ways:
- Each as-a-service offering may need its own robust data protection offering.
- Only a few (10 or less) as-a-service offerings have any third-party data protection support whatsoever.
- For all other as-a-service offerings, organizations are on their own for data protection.
- Organizations have no way to centrally discover, much less protect and manage, the data stored in all the as-a-service offerings they use.
To top this all off, both providers and organizations face the still larger but unspoken problem of how to address this crisis. They cannot practically develop and test backup and recovery code for the 10,000+ as-a-service platforms on the planet? (HYCU has identified over 17,000!) Maybe they can protect a few or perhaps the TOP 10, which is what organizations will find now. But developing and supporting backup and recovery for 10,000+ as-a-service applications represents a practically impossible task.
The As-a-service Data Protection Crisis and HYCU’s “Docker” Moment
As an enterprise data protection provider, HYCU saw this data protection crisis for DBaaS, PaaS, and SaaS platforms for what it was: unsolvable. The traditional approach of developing backup code for each one and then supporting it was doomed to fail.
It was in diagnosing this issue that HYCU had its “Docker” moment. In Docker’s case, it decoupled application development from the underlying IT infrastructure by enabling infrastructure- and platform-independent development. In HYCU’s case, it solved as-a-service data protection solution by creating a development platform (R-Cloud) that works the same way across all as-a-service platforms.
R-Cloud Implementation Overview
At a high level, HYCU implements R-Cloud by permitting developers for each as-a-service provider to use it to quickly build backup and restore modules. In this way, they may add backup and restore functionality to their as-a-service platform. These modules, largely built on code provided by HYCU, facilitate connectivity to HYCU Protégé’s data protection-as-a-service offering.
HYCU asserts a provider can complete implementing this HYCU integration module in as few as three days. Once implemented, HYCU certifies each as-a-service platform properly works using R-Cloud.
HYCU further contends that many as-a-service providers will be motivated to implement this option for one simple reason. If organizations cannot fully protect data they store in an as-a-service offering, they will not use it.
By using HYCU’s code in their as-a-service offering, providers overcome this organizational objection. They grant organizations with enterprise level data protection they need for their data stored in their as-a-service offering in a manner that adheres to the Shared Responsibility Model.
Organizations Win Big on Two Fronts
R-Cloud enables HYCU to simultaneously provide organizations with big wins on two fronts via HYCU Protégé.
First, HYCU Protégé discovers unprotected data that organizations may have in any DBaaS, PaaS, and SaaS offering they use.
Organizations obtain this view by logging in and creating a free HYCU Protégé account. Once logged in, using HYCU Protégé’s support for both Active Directory and Okta, HYCU accesses and discovers all the DBaaS, PaaS, and SaaS repositories across the organization.
HYCU Protégé uses that data to create a view of unprotected (red “x’s”) and protected repositories (green checkmarks) such as shown above. In this way, organizations may substantiate how many as-a-service platforms they have and document their current data protection gap.
Second, organizations may centrally manage backup and recovery across all their DBaaS, PaaS, and SaaS platforms.
This technology positions organizations to only use HYCU Protégé to manage the backups across all these platforms. As of its release data, HYCU already officially supports the following eleven (11) as-a-service platforms:
- Amazon RDS
- Confluence
- Google BigQuery
- Google CloudSQL
- Google Kubernetes Engine
- Google Workspace
- Jira Service Management
- Jira Software
- Microsoft 365
- Okta
- Salesforce
This represents broader data protection support for more as-a-service platforms than any other backup offering currently on the market. Further, the beauty of HYCU’s R-Cloud architecture makes it possible for it to add support for dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of these platforms every quarter.
The ease of adding HYCU data protection to each as-a-service platform should also prompt organizations to ask providers to add this feature to their product. Since almost no as-a-service platform has any third-party data protection for its product, any provider can now quickly, easily, and freely add it. Further, knowing they may obtain more customers by including it should serve as additional motivation for each to develop and deliver it.
Organizations with their own as-a-service platforms can even get in on the action by introducing HYCU’s module into them. In this way, they may also use HYCU Protégé to centrally discover and protect data stored in them.
HYCU Enables DBaaS, PaaS, and SaaS Data Protection Development with Its Docker Moment
Data protection for DPaaS, PaaS, and SaaS platforms as it existed through January 31, 2023, was, in short, irreparably broken and unfixable. HYCU R-Cloud changed that beginning on February 1, 2023.
Docker revolutionized how developers work by accelerating and simplifying how they developed applications. HYCU R-Cloud likewise has fundamentally changed how organizations may discover and protect data stored in DBaaS, PaaS, and SaaS platforms.
Neither organizations nor providers need to wait any longer for third-party backup providers to offer a solution. Or, as is the more likely scenario, wait for no solution at all.
Rather, HYCU positions every DBaaS, PaaS, or SaaS provider to include robust, enterprise-level data protection as a core component of its product. In so doing, it makes these offerings more palatable to organizations as they may more confidently adopt them.
HYCU Protégé equips organizations to document and understand the scope and depth of their problem and how at risk their data is. But it then goes further. It provides organizations and every DBaaS, PaaS, and SaaS provider with the roadmap and tools they need to implement a relatively quick and simple fix. This combination of roadmap, tools, and simplicity represents HYCU’s most remarkable achievement considering the challenge it just solved.
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