The massive amounts of data flowing into enterprises today have been described as mountainous, overwhelming, an iceberg and a tidal wave. Whatever the term used, it’s a lot of information to process. Which, is why Cohesity Inc. has focused its business not on the minor share of information mostly visible throughout the information technology organization, but rather on the significant percentage of data usually hidden from view.

The secondary data that resides below the iceberg’s water line often includes processing functions, such as backup, archive, replication, test development and analytics. Its impact on enterprise computing goes beyond space and efficiency. The management of this information also comes at a price.

“According to most industry analysts — IDC, Gartner — that represents not just 80 percent of the data, but 80 percent of the cost,” said Lynn Lucas (pictured), chief marketing officer of Cohesity. “We need to take a step back and look at how this gold mine of data can be used in a much more efficient way.”

Lucas spoke with Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, at SiliconANGLE’s studio in Palo Alto, California. They discussed Cohesity’s platform, its potential significance in advance of data protection regulation in Europe, and a recently launched campaign on social media.

A cloud-first software platform

Cohesity’s offering is designed to provide a hyperconverged platform that eliminates secondary storage silos. “It comes with a cloud-first mentality,” Lucas explained. “This is not a bolt-on with a gateway to get to Amazon or get to Azure. This is a software platform that natively understands and spans both your private cloud and your on-premises data center and the public cloud.”

The company’s solution could carry additional significance in the months ahead. The May 25 deadline for compliance with General Data Protection Regulation may have businesses with ties to Europe scrambling to account for all information across the enterprise.

“It creates a lot of risks these days for organizations because of new regulations like GDPR,” Lucas said. “Where are all those copies of personal information from European Union citizens? People don’t even know anymore.”

Cohesity is targeting a market tied to legacy backup systems with a new campaign that emphasizes its modern web scale, cloud-native data protection. The campaign slogan, splashed across social media, is “Breakup With Legacy Backup.”

“It pokes a little bit of fun at how you might breakup with your older vendor,” Lucas said. “That’s a moment that we think captures folks’ attention and gets them interested.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CubeConversations.

Photo: SiliconANGLE