Ten years ago, a typical company might have had between five and ten separate data silos. Whereas today, the average mid-market company may spread data across hundreds of different sources, resulting in a highly fragmented backup infrastructure. With so many disconnected data silos, ensuring data recovery and back-up across the silos is critical but a centralized platform solution was missing. As the global workforce shifted into remote mode in 2020, the demand for cloud delivered services exploded and ransomware attacks escalated. The need for a multi-cloud back-up & recovery platform delivered as a service for hybrid environments became even more evident. Enter HYCU, a Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform, which provides backup and recovery, data migration and disaster recovery across on-prem, public cloud, hybrid cloud, multi-cloud and SaaS operations.
This self-described Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) company is the brainchild of co-founders CEO, Simon Taylor, and CTO Goran Garevski. They had recognized the growing trend of how IT infrastructure technology was becoming “SaaSified.” Nearly every area of IT Infrastructure had transitioned to the cloud, was being offered as-a-service, user-friendly to a degree, except, backup and recovery.
The founders quickly recognized the opportunity to build a true data Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) experience that covers data backup, disaster recovery, and data mobility across all cloud environments.
Today, with 92% of organizations rapidly adopting a SaaS-based multi-cloud model, there is a critical need for companies to deploy such new breed of solutions that provide purpose-built data back-up and recovery delivered as a service (Flexera 2021 State of the Cloud Report).
Leaning in With Like-Minded Investors to Bring BaaS to Market
Cisco Investments is proud to participate in HYCU’s $53 million Series B funding, alongside Acrew Capital, Atlassian Ventures and Bain Capital Ventures.
From Simon’s perspective, Cisco Investments, has not only provided important “wisdom and guidance” around HYCU’s growth but has also helped the company sharpen their long-term vision and strategy. Cisco Investments connects startups, like HYCU, with the broader Cisco ecosystem to help them accelerate their go-to-market motions and potentially collaborate on future joint opportunities that are part of individual innovation roadmaps.
“When you look at what Cisco has done with its SaaS platform Intersight, which transforms traditional IT functions into cloud services,” Simon says, “it’s very much aligned with how we see the world, in bringing this SaaS approach to the data management space.”
When Simon and Goran founded the company in April 2018, they were initially targeting on-prem workloads. However, they quickly realized a need for a purpose-built hybrid cloud platform that could simplify and manage the entire data plane (on-prem or public cloud workloads) under a “single pane of glass.” As more customers and service providers made the transition from on-prem to public cloud, HYCU became the critical link between the two.
Today, HYCU has become a highly-recognized name in the industry and for good reason. With 3,100 customers in 78 countries, a NPS score of 91 and a net retention score of 135%, HYCU is effectively solving the data protection silo effect of the past decades, wherein one vendor dominated the market for Windows Server backup, while another specialized in VMware, and so on.
Future Proofing Data Protection
While the sheer volume of data is increasing, so too are the number of data silos, due to the breadth of SaaS companies entering the market. According to Statista, there are 17,000 SaaS applications and databases organizations operating in the U.S. alone today.
“It’s unrealistic to believe that you’re going to have a different backup vendor for every source of data. Customers are clamoring for a simpler way to protect their data, move their data and receive adequate disaster recovery,” Simon says.
By staying extremely channel-focused, HYCU looks at each opportunity through the lens of meeting the needs of traditional IT tech service providers who are assisting customers in their cloud journey, and need to provide a turnkey protected environment.
“It’s about looking at the challenges from the perspective of a customer, a partner, or an investor to fully understand their circumstances. With that knowledge, we are able to incorporate it into how we build our solution and ultimately manage the entire customer journey.”
Simon has a big vision for HYCU both in the near and long term. On the immediate horizon, HYCU plans to support the growing demand by expanding its HYCU Protégé platform to help customers eliminate the data silos and manage all of their data across clouds under a single pane of glass. Long term, Simon and team are focused on building HYCU into an iconic “cloud critical” enterprise technology brand. Simon’s vision for cloud critical would mean that HYCU that is at the forefront of every cloud-related strategic discussions with IT leaders playing the role of a trusted thought partner.
As Cisco explores future collaborations with HYCU, we look forward to jointly addressing our customers' needs and unlocking more value in the years to come with this multi-cloud data resiliency trailblazer.