CloudCasa is bringing its Kubernetes container storage backup and recovery services offline with a self-hosted option for enterprises and service providers, aiming to grow its customer base as the division's spinoff from Catalogic recedes.
CloudCasa by Catalogic's self-hosted deployments will bring the complete feature suite of the CloudCasa software into the customer's data center without relying on the SaaS capabilities of the product or public cloud connections.
Self-hosting lets an enterprise separate their infrastructure from the public internet and air-gap data. Regulated industries such as financial services, government and telecommunications still require such separation, according to Krista Macomber, an analyst at Futurum Group. Increased data privacy regulations due to the European Union's GDPR legislation can also dictate cloud connectivity for many enterprises, she added.
Vendors might want customers to fully buy into the idea that software using cloud infrastructure is the only acceptable type of software -- a form of cloud washing. But actual deployments still rely on a mix of on-premises hardware and cloud services, Macomber said.
"[Futurum Group] foresees a hybrid [cloud] world, and I don't see that going away anytime soon," Macomber said. "You've seen cloud washing for a long time. [The cloud is] still not the right fit for all industries or all cases."
Born in the cloud, now offline
CloudCasa software protects Kubernetes environments for container applications and storage. It's built on open source snapshot tools Velero and KubeDR, both developed by Catalogic. Features such as cloud backup, storage automation and restoration are sold as a SaaS. The software supports a variety of Kubernetes services through public and private cloud environments, with SaaS capabilities operating in AWS.
"We've built this solution to fit this model, but there are customers with requirements not suitable for that model," said Sathya Sankaran, founder and general manager of CloudCasa and COO of Catalogic, referencing industries such as health care and finance.
The new self-hosted option brings CloudCasa backup technology to customers who require air gapped Kubernetes clusters, zero trust with vendor products and data isolation.
Customers will need to bring their own Kubernetes platform of choice, S3 compatible object storage, authentication service and database to run the software. The self-service option is only available to enterprise plans with a one-year minimum commitment and 50 worker nodes under supervision.
Boomerang division
CloudCasa is a division of data backup and protection vendor Catalogic Software. The division planned to spin off as an independent company earlier this year by seeking external investors, Sankaran said previously.
Catalogic and the CloudCasa division have backed away from that attempt now as venture capital money and other funding sources have shifted to generative AI, leading to a lack of investment interest in other technologies, according to Sankaran.
I don't want to make a non-generative AI company look like a generative AI one. That's not what we're in the business for.
Sathya SankaranFounder and general manager, CloudCasa; COO, Catalogic
"If you're not a generative AI company, you're not exactly in the [buying] pipeline," Sankaran said. "I don't want to make a non-generative AI company look like a generative AI one. That's not what we're in the business for."
The need to spin off CloudCasa likely comes from Catalogic's desire to get a potentially expensive division and uncertain market off its books, even if Catalogic supports CloudCasa's mission in spirit, said Marc Staimer, founder and president of Dragon Slayer Consulting.
"[Catalogic] sees potential but it requires too much investment and they'd be better off on their own," he said.
CloudCasa also faces the challenge of race-to-the-bottom pricing on backup services, Staimer added, driven partially by users assuming they already have a backup capability included in their SaaS or cloud software. The Kubernetes backup market is crowded as well, and plummeting prices are used to differentiate, he said. Veeam's Kasten remains the market leader in Kubernetes backup.
"There's immense pressure to reduce the price," Staimer said. "It's been going down for a long time. … Most people don't know they need [a backup] service."
Sankaran remains optimistic of CloudCasa's future, saying many large language models that form the basis of generative AI use Kubernetes and containerized applications, and those applications will need back up services.
Tim McCarthy is a journalist living in the North Shore of Massachusetts. He covers cloud and data storage news.
