Earlier this month, Cohesity announced that it will be acquiring Veritas’ data protection business in a deal that it expects to close by the end of 2024. Yes, two of the six enterprise data protection leaders are becoming one. (See below.)

First: A Note to Bocada Customers

Bocada customers use Bocada to help manage their backups for Cohesity, Veritas (NetBackup, Backup Exec), and 40+ other popular enterprise backup, storage, and ITSM providers. 

And Bocada is not beholden to any of these vendors.

No matter the seismic shifts that occur around us, Bocada’s independence from our supported vendors ensures “business as usual” for our customers.

We congratulate the teams at Cohesity and Veritas for making a move to strengthen their competitive positions, and we look forward to continuing to support both customer bases before and after the companies are fully integrated.

Now, a Look at the New (and Much Larger) Cohesity:

Consolidated Financials (2023):

• $1.6B in revenue
• $1.3B in ARR
• 80% Gross Margins

Consolidated Customer Insights:

• 100s of Exabytes Protected (100x nearest modern competitor)
• 10,000+ Customers, 3000+ Partners
• Used by 96% of Fortune 100, 80% of Global 500

Source: https://www.cohesity.com/resource-assets/cohesity-veritas_better-together.pdf

The combined company instantly brings Cohesity up to near the scale of Veeam (2H2022 data), the current market leader, with arguably stronger enterprise bona fides (e.g., Used by 96% of Fortune 100, 80% of Global 500).

While it’s clear that the move substantially strengthens Cohesity’s position in the market, it also begs several questions.

Three Key Questions

1. How will the other four market leaders respond? (i.e., Veeam, Rubrik, Commvault, and Dell)

While Rubrik is already rumored to be preparing an IPO, it would not be surprising to see the Cohesity/Veritas merger galvanize another merger or two involving some of the remaining market leaders. Tech giants such as Microsoft could even come into play in some scenarios, particularly when you consider Microsoft’s recent investments into artificial intelligence (AI) and market leadership position in cybersecurity (e.g., Garter 2023 Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms).

2. Will combining into a ~$7B company accelerate Cohesity’s path towards becoming a “unified platform for data security and management”? By how much will it accelerate?

Veritas’ extensive enterprise customer base (including 91% of the Fortune 100, compared to 42% for Cohesity prior to the merger) was surely a major driver for the deal, given the potential to migrate NetBackup customers onto Cohesity.

Setting the acquired legacy customer base aside, does acquiring Veritas address significant gaps in Cohesity’s product and/or R&D capabilities? Cohesity surely thinks so. If so, the deal could indeed make it easier for Cohesity to become the “unified platform for data security and management” it believes customers are looking for. (See the title page of Cohesity’s presentation explaining the acquisition.)

Cohesity has made clear, however, that there will be no immediate push to consolidate solutions or migrate customers, as part of a guiding principle they are calling “no customer left behind.” Given that principle, how long will it take for the vision of a unified platform to be realized?

3. What happens to ancillary products like IT Analytics, Veritas’ backup monitoring tool, that might or might not align with Cohesity’s vision of a unified platform?

The only mention of IT Analytics in Cohesity’s roadmap update is that “Insight/Analytics products (Cohesity Turing, IT Analytics) will work on top of the combined long-term solution.”

While this clarifies that Veritas’ monitoring tool will continue to be supported for the time being, it also preserves ambiguity around whether Cohesity will prioritize Turing (its own analytics platform, mentioned first) or IT Analytics (Veritas’ analytics tool that supports 3^rd party vendors such as Veeam and Commvault) when it comes to R&D investments.

Future-Proofing Your Data Protection Tech Stack for Seismic Shifts

Cohesity has thrown down the gauntlet for its enterprise data protection peers, and chances are that responses to this catalyst (by the other leaders) are in the works.

While the impending action is exciting for industry observers, it’s also a sobering moment for data protection professionals.

Backup and storage professionals already have enough on their plates simply keeping their complex data environments protected.

But now, with this mega-merger and others that are likely to follow, it has simultaneously become important for IT teams to stay ahead of “seismic” shifts affecting their technology providers. The convergence of these two objectives makes excellent operational oversight non-negotiable.

And that’s where there is good news. With the right future-proof monitoring platform, organizations can bring steadfast order to their dynamic data protection environments and be ready for whatever comes.

At Bocada, we help many of the world’s largest IT organizations maintain centralized oversight of their disparate and dynamic data protection environments, regardless of the specific backup vendors they use. If your organization is seeking to future-proof its backup monitoring and reporting capabilities, let’s talk.