Many consumers, especially those from the Millennial generation, are much more likely to go online when it’s time to buy a new vehicle. From the comfort of their couch, consumers can perform the initial research on what kind of vehicle will suit them, make a choice, and then decide on financing options. It’s not even necessary to go to a car lot to pick up the vehicle; many companies today will bring a new vehicle to your door on a flatbed.

Companies such as AutoNation Inc. are quite aware of this new selling phenomenon, and the company strives to accommodate consumers by working on new apps that will keep potential buyers engaged and buying. As a result, the company needs to keep where the apps reside as agile and responsive as possible.

“Net new-generation apps that we’re going to build are going to be in the cloud because of the capabilities to auto-scale,” said Adam Rasner (pictured), vice president of technology operations at AutoNation Inc.

Rasner spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the VMworld conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. They discussed what AutoNation was looking for in a data protection vendor, and the reasons why they choose Cohesity Inc.‘s VMware-ready solutions. (* Disclosure below.)

Kicking the tires

Currently, AutoNation’s data is 90 percent on-premises and 10 percent on Microsoft Azure’s cloud platform, but Rasner expects the ratio to change over time. Initially, AutoNation was seeking data protection with a rock-solid backup and recovery solution. It started out looking for an integrated hardware/software solution; plus, the company needed something scalable, with a predictive cost model.

It found that older legacy companies didn’t “play well” in this space, Rasner pointed out, adding that they are expensive to support and, eventually, they hit a wall on hardware limitations.

“Whatever we chose was going to be an integrated hardware/software platform,” Rasner said.

After a six-month, side-by-side comparison with different vendors, AutoNation chose Cohesity, a software-defined hyperconverged platform. AutoNation’s decision was based on agility, performance, cost, ease of implementation, user interface, and ease of management.

The company also found a bonus: After the backup and recovery piece was under control, it started using the new solution for other capabilities, including tier-2 storage.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the VMworld conference. (* Disclosure: Cohesity Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Cohesity nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE