Veritas and HubStor - a Meeting of Minds

You probably have seen the recent announcement of the General Availability (GA) of Veritas NetBackup SaaS Protection. We thought you might want a little more background on the product, which is a direct result of Veritas acquiring HubStor at the end of 2020.

It is not every day that one acquires another company, and not often that you’ll see a blog post that gives an inside view of how we went about it. So here is some insight into the process we went through.

You’ll learn what gives us confidence that this acquisition will go a long way to effectively address your key needs around the protection of SaaS workloads such as Microsoft Office 365, which are only growing in their importance since the onset of the pandemic.

Technical evaluation

Along with other senior architects in Veritas, I was part of the team vetting HubStor from a technical perspective. Looking at a company and their technology from a technical angle involves a whole set of things such as,

• Design and architecture, and its ability to evolve with time
• Code-level details
• Roadmap and futures
• Engineering practices and culture
• Actual hands-on evaluation of the technology and testing it out
• Evaluating non-functional aspects such as performance and scale
• Comparisons with other offerings in the market from a technology angle
• And much more

All of this needs to be done in a short time, so it involves experience, technical acumen, and close engagement from both sides.

Technical evaluation, our impressions

All the technical discussions were very smooth and effective. The coherence of architecture, the grip on the market and its needs, and the clarity of thought about the technical roadmap was readily evident. There is a certain simplicity and elegance about the design that makes reasoning about it tractable and gives confidence on its ability to meet key customer needs and evolve with time. Security and isolation are fundamentally baked into the design, and these days, this is among the most important considerations for any enterprise looking to adopt data protection in the cloud.

We rolled up our sleeves to dig into the product and test it out. The testing went well, and any questions from Veritas were immediately well-understood and resolved – not just by addressing the direct question, but also by providing the background and context relevant to it. The performance and scale aspects also matched the predictions for the configuration that the testing was done with.

Of course, when technical people meet, there are bound to be debates and shortcomings pointed out. It was the same in our case. These criticisms were welcomed, the areas of improvement were acknowledged and a roadmap around that was prepared and reviewed. It was evident that both teams saw eye to eye, and there was no trace of an unreasonable defensive mindset that often mars technical collaboration in our industry.

The team and engineering practices

It was clear that the HubStor team was small but a solid one. It has years of expertise in the data protection domain. This is important because learnings from previous experience around design and architecture get incorporated into the new design they come up with for their new offering. Everyone has a good grasp of the code, the technology as well as the engineering philosophy. and move fast as one. The match with Veritas’s open and empowered culture was clear, and we could see that with Veritas’s involvement, the team will only go from strength to strength.

Integrating into Veritas

We immediately saw multiple ways that we could integrate the technology into the broader Veritas portfolio. The HubStor team was quick to understand the Veritas approach to technology and the market. They were able to actively engage in creative ways to identify a phased approach that can broaden it with integrations into NetBackup and Veritas as a whole, while still allowing for core improvements of the HubStor offering. As customers, you will see the benefits as this plays out as per the identified phases.

Integration is not just about product integration. It involves the integration of people and technology. There is much being done in this regard as well. Teams are being augmented, and people are working closely together. There are plans to leverage the underlying pieces of technology in other Veritas products as well.

Looking ahead

There is so much more to talk about. Still, I hope this post gives you an idea of why we at Veritas are so excited about this acquisition from both a technical and a business perspective, but most importantly because it makes it possible for us to help our customers where they most need it – and we’re just (if not more) excited about the GA of NetBackup SaaS Protection. We think of our team as not just HubStor and Veritas but also our customers. We have seen this happening over so many years when we engage with customers in our sprint demos, in our technology and solution discussions, and as we adjust our plans based on what we learn from our customers. This is what makes us tick, and we look forward to a great future together.