Three years ago the big question was: “On-prem or in-cloud?” Today’s answer is both, as the majority of companies adopt hybrid solutions. However, the question turns to the complexity of securing data that is dispersed over multiple platforms. Taking steps to solve this issue is N2W Software Inc.’s Backup & Recovery version 2.4, announced during AWS re:Invent 2018 this week in Las Vegas, Nevada.

“You have a single platform that can manage data protection both on- and off-premises so that you can leverage where is the best place for this workload and protect it across no matter where it chooses to live,” said Danny Allan (pictured, left), vice president of product strategy at Veeam Software Inc., was acquired N2W this past January.

Allan and Andy Langsam (pictured, right), chief operating officer at N2W Software, spoke with John Walls (@JohnWalls21), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host Justin Warren (@jpwarren), chief analyst at PivotNine Pty Ltd, during AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas. They discussed the release of N2WS version 2.4 and the changing face of the back-up industry as it expands from security into predictive analysis. (* Disclosure below.)

Slashing storage costs

N2WS version 2.4 introduces snapshot decoupling into the AWS S3 repository, allowing customers to move backup EC2 snapshots into the much cheaper S3 storage, according to Langsam. Real customer savings are estimated to be 40 to 50 percent a month, he added.

“Anytime you can talk about cost reduction from five cents a gig on EC2 storage to two cents on S3, it’s a tremendous savings for our customer base,” Langsam said.

A recent survey conducted by N2WS showed that more than half of the company’s customers spend $10,000 a month or more on AWS storage costs. “If they can save 40 percent on that, that’s real, real savings,” Langsam stated. “[It’s] more than the cost of the software alone.”

N2WS has reported 189-percent growth in revenue since its January 2018 acquisition by Veeam, according to Allan. “We’ve got customers recently like Notre Dame and Cardinal Health, and then we have people getting into the cloud for the very first time,” he said.

Allan attributes this growth to the financial stability provided by having a parent company. “Being acquired has allowed us to focus on the customer and innovation versus going out and raising money from investors,” he stated.

Security concerns have catapulted back-up services into the spotlight, but their capabilities are starting to expand outside of just protection and recovery. “We’re moving away from just being reactive to business need to being proactive in driving the business forward,” Allan said.

Applying new technologies available through advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence allows data protection companies to offer suggestions to their clients that will increase productivity or reduce costs. “We [can] leverage a lot of the algorithms that are existing in clouds like AWS to help analyze the data and make decisions that [our clients] don’t even know that they need to make,” Allan said. “That decision could be, you need to run this analysis at 2:00 a.m. in the morning because the instances are cheaper.”

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE