Rubrik Launches Polaris, SaaS Platform for Data Management Applications

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Following this announcement, here are a few questions to Bipul Sinha, CEO and co-founder of Rubrik.

StorageNewsletter: Rubrik Polaris represents a significant evolution of 'classic' Rubrik Cloud Data Management approach, what were the triggers to start Polaris?
Bipul Sinha: At Rubrik, we're obsessed with innovation. We thrive on solving the biggest data management challenges in an unconventional and radically simple manner. We’re continuing this mission by launching Polaris, the industry's first SaaS platform for a new class of data management applications.

As enterprises adopt cloud-first and multi-cloud approaches, their applications and data become increasingly decentralized across disconnected locations and services. Coupled with explosive data growth, retaining control of all their data becomes nearly impossible. In order for enterprises to retain control, implement governance, and meet compliance goals, a unified system of record is needed to manage and secure applications and data across data centers and clouds.

We created Polaris to address this challenge through a SaaS platform that delivers an unified system of record based on a global content catalogue and includes native search, security, and workflow orchestration to make application data and metadata easily discoverable and usable.

Staying true to the core tenet of open access and integration, Polaris delivers an API based architecture to allow Rubrik and other third party vendors to quickly build data management applications and services at unlimited scale. This new class of data management applications would help businesses tackle the challenges of risk mitigation, compliance, and governance across all their applications and data wherever they are deployed.

Why did we build an entirely new platform from scratch? Polaris was a natural evolution for Rubrik. Since day one, our approach to data protection has involved being deeply integrated with each application to bring management under one platform. Thus, we not only capture the data, but all that relevant metadata that describes it. Polaris exploits our understanding of these applications and their data to deliver intelligent data services, such as deep analytics, on top of the platform.

What do you mean by Unified System of Record? Is it is a new class of data management?
The Polaris SaaS Platform provides a unified system of record to organize all your business information to make it easily discoverable and usable. It complements our flagship Cloud Data Management products by providing a platform for a new class of data management applications addressing unified control, search, orchestration, and data intelligence.

The way to think about Polaris is you have these applications everywhere and you have this metadata everywhere. Rubrik lives both inside data centers and on cloud to manage those application for backup, recovery, archive, and DR through our Cloud Data Management product. Polaris actually creates a common framework around all of these applications and data to bring a global content catalog, orchestration, search, and security - all exposed through a common set of open APIs for Rubrik, as well as third party application developers, to build a new breed of data management applications. So Polaris offers a new platform, on top of which new Data Management Applications can be delivered. In many ways, Polaris is to Rubrik's cloud data management what Force.com is to Salesforce's CRM application.

Salesforce made a very strategic move by acquiring Mulesoft as it allows Force.com to be a unified platform of record for both on-premises and cloud applications for structured business data. Yet, this is only half the problem. Polaris tackles the other half of the problem for data and metadata that reside in enterprise applications, SQL databases, file shares, etc. as unstructured data across on-premises and cloud.

Does it mean Rubrik is going now beyond data protection and finally consider live data and not copy data?
Our offerings are still rooted in data protection and management. Polaris builds on our philosophy of expanding the role of backup data beyond an insurance policy into a business asset that can be used to address global data policies, compliance, governance, and security.

Polaris introduces some new directions for Rubrik as new terms are associated such access, governance, analysis and intelligence much more than cloud data protection. What are the offered services?
The first application debuting on the platform is Polaris GPS, which delivers centralized management across global, distributed Rubrik environments, whether you run Rubrik on-prem, at a remote site, or in the cloud. We chose to deliver this application first to address one of our biggest customer asks - global policy and control management.

Polaris GPS delivers an interactive global dashboard to visualize and control all your physical, virtual, and cloud applications and data in an elegantly simple and visually rich manner. For instance, users now have access to a global system activities log in one place to quickly identify and isolate incidents with easy-to-use filters. They can also dive into a single installation for deeper analysis and reporting. Beyond visibility, enterprises want to interact with their business data and customize in real-time. Polaris GPS delivers instant analytics across an entire environment while taking our trademark consumer-grade simplicity to a new level.  

Think of Polaris GPS as a control center. You can get a bird's eye view but can also drill-down into specific metrics, quickly spot incidents, and troubleshoot.

Could we consider Rubrik Polaris a SaaS flavor of Alta or a deployment model of Alta?
Polaris complements Rubrik's flagship Cloud Data Management product. For example, customers manage different groups of applications and data with our Rubrik appliances and Cloud Data Management software offerings (e.g., Rubrik software running on AWS or Azure, Rubrik software running at a ROBO site). Polaris unifies all these applications and data scattered throughout on-prem and cloud locations by delivering a single system of record delivered as a SaaS platform. There is zero infrastructure requirement for activating Polaris. Applications delivered on top of Polaris can uniquely address data policy, security, governance, and more at a global level.

Multi-Cloud is a real business needed but it seems that you target AWS and Azure and less GCP. Is there a reason for that or this is just reflecting the market demand?
We support all major cloud providers, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Fundamentally, we are vendor-agnostic and have designed our platform to be so (open-API architecture). We look to our customers - using their feedback and adoption behaviors - to drive prioritization.   

Is it the way Rubrik will address GDPR?
GDPR is in essence a data compliance problem. So the ability to have a global view of an enterprises' metadata will help any solution. If we can see all the global metadata via the unified system of record, then we know where data lives, who owns it, and what it contains in order to allow customers to meet compliance standards.

As users have already so many products, do you provide migration tools or services to facilitate the move to Polaris?
There's no migration tools/services needed to use Polaris. Polaris is really a complementary offering to Rubrik's Cloud Data Management products. There's also no new infrastructure needed for Polaris. Customers can easily get started through a web browser with a secure internet connection.

What is the license model for Polaris? For 'classic' Rubrik users is there a natural upgrade path?
Polaris GPS will be offered on a term subscription basis.

As you replace several market solutions and provide an all-in-one model, how do you see the market reaction to Polaris?
The implication is that Polaris has the potential to disrupt how critical enterprise applications, serving multi-billion markets, such as analytics (Tableau, Informatica), data warehouses (Teradata, Oracle) and security (Splunk), are architected and delivered.

The Polaris SaaS platform is the next big leap in Rubrik's evolution as a Cloud Data Management company. This platform is first-of-its kind. No one in the industry has taken an approach like this. This is just the beginning, so stay tuned for more updates.