Data consolidation provider Cohesity Inc. is updating its software-defined storage platform that combines big data storage with end-to-end data protection on infinitely scalable architecture.

The new release, Cohesity Orion 5.0, is significant as it’s claimed to be the industry’s first platform that serves as both a data backup solution and a searchable archive for structured and unstructured data.

The Cohesity platform is compatible with both on-premises and private and public clouds, and allows data held within all three environments to be managed from a single location. However, the ability to back up workloads while serving as a data archive is a significant milestone, the company said.

That’s because, historically, archive data and backup data have always been stored separately, with companies usually buying different storage systems for each type of data. But Cohesity says this no longer makes sense because of the nature and growth of big data, with companies generating tons of it on an almost constant basis.

The problem with this is that huge inefficiencies crop up when several copies of data are stored in different locations. Cohesity Orion 5.0 is designed to correct that by allowing data to be stored at a single location, acting as both archive and backup.

Cohesity reckons that combining storage in this way will bring about benefits such as simplified administration, a reduction in overall data copies and significantly faster search and retrieval. Storage costs will also be lowered, the company said.

Early adopters offered up by the company were generally enthusiastic about the new offering. “Cohesity helped us to easily back up the growing critical and mandatory-to-save data, like police department videos from their vehicle and body cameras, and made those files instantaneously available upon request,” said Ben Price, director of administrative and residential IT at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Cohesity said Orion 5.0 will be made generally available within 90 days.

Image: Cohesity