News

Veritas Outsources Cloud Archive Service to Microsoft Azure

• By Jeffrey Schwartz
• February 22, 2017

As part of a multi-year cloud partnership with Microsoft, Veritas Software on Wednesday announced it is migrating its Enterprise Vault.cloud (EV.cloud ) data archiving service from its own managed datacenters to Microsoft Azure.

The move is part of Veritas' effort to optimize its portfolio of data protection offerings for hybrid cloud environments using Azure public cloud storage as backup and archive targets.

Besides its cloud-based and on-premises EV solutions, Veritas is known for its Backup Exec for Windows and NetBackup enterprise data protection software, which -- as the company promised last fall -- now support Azure as a target.

Veritas said it is announcing the Microsoft pact as its employees celebrate the one-year anniversary of its spinoff from Symantec. Private equity firm Carlyle Group officially closed the $7.4 billion buyout from Symantec in late January of 2015. Since then, Veritas has pledged to make its data protection wares more cloud-ready. Prior to its announcement of the Microsoft pact, for instance, Veritas last week said it will integrate its Veritas 360 Data Management tool with Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud offerings.

Azure was a logical contender for EV.cloud given its popularity as an archiving service for Exchange, SharePoint, Skype for Business, Lync messaging and Office 365 data.

"There is a lot of potential in having archival technology living and breathing within the same cloud framework as Office 365," said Jason Buffington, a principle analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group.

Veritas' decision to move EV.cloud to Azure represents an important endorsement of Microsoft's public cloud infrastructure. Despite the obvious connections between Office 365, Microsoft's on-premises software and Azure, Buffington said that Veritas could just have easily chosen AWS or Google Cloud Platform, which are also partners and have comparable global-scale clouds.

"When you think about what Enterprise Vault is about, cloud or no cloud, it's your archive copy of last resort. It's the copy the auditor requires and, in many cases, the copy that means you won't have absorbent fines or go to jail," Buffington said. "Veritas has decided that they trust the Azure platform. When they looked at what the underlying frameworks were like and their potential to innovate on top of that platform, and [taking into account] an assurance of geopolitical boundaries and a whole bunch of considerations, Veritas' relocation of their cloud is a huge testament to the Azure platform."

Veritas decided to outsource the hosting of EV.cloud to focus on adding new capabilities to the platform that support a growing number of industry and government regulations that are impacting data retention and availability requirements. Alex Sakaguchi, director of solutions marketing at Veritas, said the growth of Office 365 and hosted Exchange, SharePoint and Skype for Business is contingent on the ability to provide the necessary protections and governance.

"The primary driver of that is moving from Exchange on-premises to Exchange Online," Sakaguchi said. "And then there's some unique capabilities for customers to move to Office 365 to employ Azure Storage. From a technology standpoint, this will help facilitate that movement and ensure customers have their data management capabilities, visibility and the information that they need as they make that transition."

Sakaguchi said the EV.cloud migration to Azure will be staged over time, though Veritas isn't providing any timelines at this point. However, he said customers will be kept informed.