Agile Dev and Test For DataPlatform From Cohesity

Cohesity, Inc. announced the Agile Dev and Test, a solution that addresses a bottleneck organizations face in building applications at speed.

It moves away from the request-fulfill model where developers request access to production-grade data and wait – sometimes weeks – for IT operations teams to provision the data needed to build and properly test applications.

Instead, the company’s solution provides development and test (dev/test) teams with a self-service provisioning model that gives them rapid access to backup data when they need it directly on the firm’s DataPlatform. It also equips organizations, including IT operations, with the control mechanisms they require to ensure data remains secure and in compliance.

With Agile Dev and Test, enterprises can instantly and securely provision zero-cost clones of traditional and modern database backups. Zero-cost cloning creates a reference to the original data, eliminating the need to create an identical, full-size copy of it. Development teams can then gain self-service access to the most current, virtual instances of backed up production data in mere minutes with no impact on production environments. This provisioning model plays a key role in building higher quality applications.

“The Cohesity Agile Dev and Test solution furthers the company’s mission to make backup data more productive,” said Vineet Abraham, SVP, engineering and product management, Cohesity. “Cohesity Agile Dev and Test is a logical extension and significant enhancement to our data management platform, not only accelerating application time to market for those adopting ‘shift-left’ principles, but also improving application security and driving greater compliance throughout the organization.“

Accelerates App development while elevating security and compliance
The DataPlatform is instrumental in providing developers with an easy way to access backup data, and also can cut down on costs and positively impact an organization’s compliance and security posture.

By using one platform for both data protection and test data management, organizations can reduce the number of copies that are created to facilitate modern application development.

Eliminating copies can do the following:

• Lower costs: Cohesity’s zero-cost clone approach can lower storage costs by reducing the number of copies that need to be stored in the first place.

• Help ensure compliance: Organizations often have no idea what personally identifiable information (PII) is contained within copies of data that are flung across environments, and they rely on a mix of home-grown scripts or tools to mask the data, which is error prone and does not scale or address compliance regulations, like GDPR. The company solves this by scanning data for PII and masking it.

• Improve security: By reducing the number of physical copies, organizations can also reduce their data footprint and as a direct result reduce the chance of a security breach. Organizations can also use the firm’s CyberScan to conduct vulnerability assessments that help ensure instances of data accessed by developers are secure. Additionally, through the DataPlatform, admins can define who has access to data and who does not. And, they can revoke access privileges – giving organizations greater control and visibility which can further improve their security posture.

“Cohesity has set a new standard for data management, first helping us meet our backup and recovery SLAs, and now offering capabilities that will streamline development and test operations for enterprises,” said Jim Wild, manager, R&D infrastructure global operations, Navis. “The new self-service capability brings much needed agility to the development and test teams without any impact to the production environment. Cohesity is our one-stop-solution for all data management requirements.“

“When it comes to developing cutting edge, error-free applications, developers rely on two critical components: high-quality data and quick access to that data,” said Steve Curly, senior system engineer, Navis. “With Cohesity, we can get access to data faster and more securely. On-demand data refresh will help enterprises cut down their time to market, reduce defects in production, and scale down their data footprint – which can also play a key role in cutting costs.“

“Our research shows that organizations devote up to 60% of their storage capacity for data copies and that 80% rely on home-grown masking scripts applied ad-hoc. Cohesity is introducing a capability we call copy data management. It helps modern DevOps to streamline the application development and testing process by providing immediate access to clean and up-to-date data copies and can help reduce development times by days or weeks,” said Phil Goodwin, research director, IDC. “Development and test teams can self-serve zero-cost clones rather than waiting on a manual request model for faster time to market, and data management becomes much simpler without the need for separate physical infrastructure and multiple redundant data copies. The result is bending the storage cost curve down. Automated data masking reduces the risk of accidental data disclosure.“

“Cohesity has introduced a faster and more secure way for enterprises to run application development and testing, and that creates new opportunities for us to help clients modernize their IT infrastructure,” said Eduardo Figueredo, practice lead, data protection, RoundTower Technologies, LLC., a Cohesity partner. “The web-scale architecture of Cohesity also means that we can offer these capabilities as a subscription-based service that delivers unique benefits to the industry.“

The Agile Dev and Test solution will be made available to the firm’s DataPlatform and DataProtect customers as a separate subscription in 4Q19. The self-service capability is currently beta and the data masking capability will be available in the coming quarters.

Resources:
Solution brief for Cohesity Agile Dev and Test
Blog: Enabling high-quality data for agile app dev and test
Video: Modern Application Development with Agile Dev and Test       
Technical blog on Cohesity Agile Dev and Test