As cloud and object store have permeated the market over the past few years, data storage, backup and protection have become a top priority for businesses across industries. Once considered by most a precautionary insurance policy of sorts, these data protection efforts are now a major focus in service offerings from companies emerging as cloud support businesses.

“We can’t operate in a model where a recovery time objective is days or hours … and [you] need a full team of people to manage. As enterprise matured to the point where everything else was amazing and hyperconverged … we finally saw this isn’t going to stand,” said Chris Wahl (pictured), chief technologist at cloud data management company Rubrik Inc.

As technological advancements outpace data protection, Rubrik works to provide customers the safety net they need for scalable migrations, according to Wahl, who spoke with John Walls (@JohnWalls21) and Lisa Martin (@LuccaZara), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host Justin Warren (@jpwarren), chief analyst at PivotNine Pty Ltd. They spoke during the AWS re:Invent event in Las Vegas, Nevada, and discussed the path of digital transformation in tech and how Rubrik is innovating to help customers adapt. (* Disclosure below.)

‘Cloud is really, really hard’

The Rubrik platform allows customers to securely recover, search and develop data in hybrid cloud systems. Only two-and-a-half years on the market, the company is working to solve some of the most pressing issues faced by enterprise customers, including “onboarding into the cloud and using those resources, as well as making sure their assets — be it the application, the data itself or a physical server — be protected and available for recovery in a really quick way,” Wahl said.

Despite being a relatively young company, Rubrik has already reached the advanced tier partner status with Amazon Web Services Inc.. The status is due in part to the company’s commitment to innovation and finding customized solutions for customers. Currently, Wahl is working through the challenge of determining appropriate data distributions with Rubrik’s enterprise businesses.

“We’re putting a lot of data for customers into public cloud and even private object store resources, and there’s the ability … [to] put that shim layer into the edge to do the function as the data’s going in there. There’s a lot of interesting opportunities that I’m looking forward to in the next year,” he said.

The other challenge Wahl is working through at Rubrik is the cultural change driven by digital transformation. “That scale is astronomical compared to what we’re used to,” he said.

Wahl’s experience adapting to virtualization informs much of the way he advises customers to refocus their efforts to strategic work as they make the shift. “Sometimes it’s tough to … trust the intelligent system to manage this part of the stack, and … focus on where we’re trying to go,” he said.

Wahl’s empathetic approach to finding solutions that scale for enterprise businesses is key to Rubrik’s ability to support customers and grow with them. “Cloud is really, really hard, ” he said.

The company is constantly monitoring data to ensure its valid and secure, and it handles all encryption throughout the data lifecycle. “Part of our secret sauce is as the data is entering into that environment, we’re not just saying … it’s now your problem. … We handle it from cradle to grave for all the data,” Wahl concluded.

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE