Microsoft and Rubrik are announcing today an agreement that will likely shakeup the industry. Rubrik, a company that provides data protection, ransomware, and backup solution has entered into an agreement with the Redmond tech giant that involves equity investment.
The reason that this is a significant arrangement is that with its cloud, Microsoft uses a “shared responsibility” model for data and availability. Meaning, Microsoft takes responsibility for the services being online and available, but it is up to the tenant to secure, backup, and maintain sovereignty over the content store in Microsoft’s cloud.
With this agreement and investment in Rubrik, Microsoft is taking a significant step forward in providing direct solutions that target the content side of the cloud business. This means that the company now has a preferred solution to push its customers towards for cyber resilience and if Rubrik grows in value, this is a win for Microsoft.
The backup and recovery industry is a big marketplace and there are companies like Veeam and many others who have grown to billion-dollar operations as Microsoft has typically avoided playing in these waters. With their investment in Rubrik, the narrative is starting to change and it could signal another area of growth for Mirosoft.
In addition to the pure backup and recovery markets, backing up and recovering Microsoft 365 data is another sizeable business segment that is quickly growing. Along with Veeam, we see companies like AvePoint who are building tools that allow for granular recovery and retention of data store in Microsoft’s productivity suite like Teams, SharePoint, and Exchange.
In the announcement, Ribrik says that they share more than 2,000 mutual customers, and given this new arrangement, I would expect that number to grow quickly.
An investment from Microsoft in this field is going to be a rocketship for Rubrik as it adds a significant amount of value to the brand and opens up new avenues for marketing its solutions to the Microsoft community. While other vendors in the segment will continue to thrive, it’s clear that Microsoft is betting on Rubrik for the long term.