Cohesity: Leading the Charge in AI-Powered Data Management

2024 has been a remarkable year for backup vendor Cohesity, marked by innovation and strategic growth. From the launch of Cohesity Gaia to acquiring its former rival, Veritas, Cohesity aims to cement its position as the largest player in the data backup industry, as recognized by market analysts.

Introducing Cohesity Gaia

Cohesity Gaia, unveiled in February 2024, is a generative AI assistant integrated into the Cohesity Data Cloud (CDC) platform. The name "Gaia" stands for "general AI application." This powerful tool utilizes the Microsoft Azure OpenAI large language model to index and analyze customer data, enabling the generation of insightful reports, audits, knowledge bases, and more.

Gregory Statton, Cohesity’s vice president of AI solutions, is steering the company’s AI initiatives. He envisions Gaia as the foundation for a more extensive AI ecosystem within Cohesity, extending beyond the capabilities of a simple chatbot interface.

In an exclusive conversation with Informa TechTarget, Statton shared his insights on Gaia’s evolution, the implications of the merger with Veritas, and the path to maintaining relevance in the ever-evolving AI landscape.

What’s Next for Cohesity Gaia?

Statton emphasizes that a critical aspect of using AI effectively lies in understanding what questions to ask about data. The recently launched feature, "Explore Topics," allows users to visualize themes within their data. By clustering and labeling these themes, customers can generate sample questions and dive deeper into their data’s significance.

For instance, one client leveraged the Explore Topics feature to optimize their cloud storage costs by identifying and relocating important data clusters. The full integration of data from Cohesity and Veritas is still in progress, with hopes of unlocking hundreds of exabytes of data to enhance the AI platform.

Change Since the Veritas Acquisition

The acquisition of Veritas has markedly shifted Cohesity’s trajectory. Statton reports that the integration of teams from both companies has been seamless. They’ve already forged plans to merge the data ecosystems, paving the way for innovative AI applications powered by a richer dataset.

The AI-powered tools developed by Veritas, particularly those focused on operational insights and conversational reporting, are being incorporated into the Cohesity ecosystem as part of this integration.

A Vision for the Future of Gaia

Looking ahead, Statton points out that Cohesity is collecting a wealth of metadata from file size to access times and permissions. By capturing semantic embeddings and conducting topic analyses on this data, they aim to provide more comprehensive insights. This approach could revolutionize workflows, benefiting various teams, including security teams conducting forensic analyses.

Statton envisions creating tools that will assist AI model builders by streamlining the data preparation process – a task that is oftentimes manual and time-consuming. He believes Cohesity can position itself as a vital partner in this space, offering platforms and services tailored to the needs of model builders.

Expanding the AI Landscape Beyond Backup

Cohesity’s identity has historically revolved around backup and data security, leading some to question its move into AI. Statton defends this evolution by highlighting that one of AI’s significant needs is high-quality data. As enterprise data backups are already part of Cohesity’s offerings, they are uniquely equipped to provide safe access to data, thus bridging the gap between data management and AI applications.

In fact, Statton assures that all data processed through Cohesity remains secure within its data plane. Soon, customers will also have the option to bring their own language models for even greater flexibility.

Conclusion

Cohesity is not just pivoting into AI; it is intelligently weaving AI into its core offerings, demonstrating an advanced understanding of data management needs in the modern age. The integration of Gaia, alongside the talent and technology from Veritas, positions Cohesity as a prime player in the data-centric future.

The AI Buzz Hub team is excited to see where these breakthroughs take us. Want to stay in the loop on all things AI? Subscribe to our newsletter or share this article with your fellow enthusiasts.