Hyperconverged infrastructure startup Cohesity Inc. today launched a new cloud version of its flagship storage appliance.

Cohesity DataPlatform Cloud Edition provides a standalone implementation of the software that powers the firm’sappliance. It’s designed to provide a centralized platform for hosting backups, archives and other so-called secondary storage workloads. Organizations are increasingly moving such low-priority information outside the firewall in an effort to cut their on-premises infrastructure costs.

Too often, however, the transfer can itself become a considerable expense due to the logistical difficulties involved in moving large amounts of data to a remote location. One of the biggest issues is the need for a storage gateway to convert the information into a format that is supported by the target environment. According to Cohesity, DataPlatform Cloud Edition eliminates the need for third-party software by enabling customers to directly sync records between their on-premises systems and cloud deployments.

This value proposition builds on a remote replication feature that the startup introduced for its appliance back in April along with two other complementary cloud tools. The first lets administrators move infrequently accessed files to an off-premises archive, while the other is a tiering mechanism that makes it possible to quickly provision remote capacity in the event of a usage spike. DataPlatform Cloud Edition can also be deployed on a standalone basis and used as a company’s main secondary storage environment.

The software only works on Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Corp.’s Azure for now, but Cohesity will likely add integration with other platforms over time as it works to court a broader range of customers. Its efforts to address companies’ growing reliance on the public cloud could give the startup a valuable edge over rivals such as Rubrik Inc., which sells a similar hyperconverged appliance for storing secondary data.

Image courtesy of Cohesity