Clumio SaaS Backup and Recovery Now Protects Amazon RDS Workloads

Clumio SaaS backup and recovery services now include protection for Amazon RDS workloads, adding new capabilities for enterprise cloud customers. Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) makes it easier for users to set up and run relational databases in the cloud.

The new RDS backup services provide long-term retention of AWS native services and free recovery snapshots for users. Clumio has provided backup protection for Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) users since November. The new RDS backups protect workloads on VMware Cloud on AWS, AWS native services and SaaS applications.

Clumio’s AWS data protection service includes operational recovery and data recovery services, along with long-term retention capabilities for compliance.

Clumio’s Chadd Kenney

“This was something customers and partners have asked for,” Chadd Kenney, Clumio’s chief technologist, told Channel Futures. “Partners asked for this after we announced our Amazon EBS offering. They asked for the next evolution of that, which is Amazon RDS.”

Many resellers now are building out their cloud teams, which are looking to build services for customers, said Kenney. Part of that is to provide SaaS backup and recovery options for customers.

“Clumio gives resellers opportunities to help customers accelerate their cloud journeys by bringing in cost reduction for data protection,” he said.

The Clumio services protect data across public and private cloud, on-premises systems and on SaaS applications such as Microsoft 365. The new RDS services also include a free tier that allows customers to manage snapshots in their AWS accounts.

Making SaaS Backup and Recovery Easier

Steve McDowell, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, said the new offering will help Amazon RDS users.

“What Clumio has delivered sidesteps the complex hoops cloud customers need to jump through when trying to map their compliance policies against the capabilities available with Amazon RDS,” said McDowell. “This removes the storage limitations and cost constraints inherent in RDS snapshots.”

Enterprise data is under increasing regulation and compliance requirements.

“While Amazon provides a basic set of storage recovery mechanisms for RDS based around snapshots, those only address operational recovery,” said McDowell. “They do nothing for compliance or the long-term data retention needs of most IT organizations. Existing backup and recovery solutions, most of which simply wrap and manage RDS snapshots, face the same limitations.”

The new Amazon RDS SaaS backup and recovery capabilities “clearly open new doors for channel partners,” he added.

“There is a solid market expansion play for channel partners whose customers are looking to migrate on-premises database solutions to RDS. The lack of easy mechanisms for backup and recovery in that space has been an inhibitor,” he said.

This is where long-term retention and abilities to recover from ransomware and other threats are paramount.

“Clumio is removing many of those inhibitors,” noted McDowell.

The improved product also lets partners expand their AWS revenue.

“Clumio’s solution is simply operationally less expensive, which should equal increased margin for channel partners selling this into their base. Not only do existing channel partners have an increased portfolio for solving customer problems, there’s solid margin expansion as well,” he said.

McDowell also likes the way Clumio approaches SaaS backup and recovery.

“Most of the competitive solutions simply wrap RDS snapshot capabilities,” he said. “That results in a more complex solution that does nothing to address the underlying costs of data retention for RDS.”