HYCU to enhance its multicloud data protection service 

Today, hybrid cloud and multicloud data backup and recovery as a service provider HYCU, Inc. announced it has raised $53 million as part of a series B funding round led by Acrew Capital, which it intends to use to meet the demand for multicloud data protection solutions in on-premise and public cloud environments. 

The organization’s flagship solution, HYCU Protégé, provides organizations with a backup-as-a-service solution they can use to back up apps, virtual machines and databases in air-gapped cloud storage. 

It’s an approach designed to enable enterprises to defend their data against ransomware with data resilience, so that data stored in the cloud can’t be exfiltrated or encrypted, which is now essential given that ransomware attacks grew by 92.7% last year. 

Maintaining data resiliency against ransomware 

The announcement comes as enterprises are operating in increasingly complex and diverse multicloud, and hybrid cloud environments where data is stored inside and outside the network’s perimeter. 

“With 92% of organizations rapidly adopting a (software-as-a-service) SaaS-based multicloud model, there is a critical need for companies to deploy a new breed of solutions that serve as true multicloud data protection delivered as a service,” said Simon Taylor, CEO and founder of HYCU.

“More than 80% of data breaches are the direct result of human error, which can cost billions of dollars. This doesn’t even begin to factor in the rise of ransomware, where we are seeing an attack every 11 seconds on companies across North America,” Taylor said. 

In this environment, Taylor, says that organizations need to have the ability to continually backup data so that it’s available and easy to recover if a data breach occurs. 

HYCU attempts to address these challenges by offering cloud-native automated data migration, backup, and recovery as a service so that organizations can efficiently protect, manage, and recover apps, data, databases, and VMs in multicloud environments. 

A brief look at the cloud backup market 

The organization’s funding comes as the cloud backup market continues to grow, with researchers anticipating an increase in value from $1834.3 million in 2019, to $4229.3 million by 2026. 

However, HYCU isn’t the only organization that’s offering a cloud data protection and recovery service to combat the growing number of ransomware threats. 

One of the organization’s main competitors is Rubrik, a cloud-based data resiliency platform that offers enterprises automated air-gapped backups for on-premises, multicloud, and SaaS environments that can’t be modified, deleted or encrypted. Rubrik currently holds a valuation of $4 billion following a Microsoft investment last year. 

Another significant competitor is Veeam with Veeam Backup and Replication, which enables enterprises to back up and recover data in hybrid cloud environments, with instant recovery capabilities for NAS, Microsoft SQL and Oracle. Veeam Software was purchased by Insight Partners for $5 billion in 2020. 

Although, HYCU’s on-premises and cloud agility is one of the key differentiators from other products. 

“The biggest differentiator HYCU offers is the one familiar experience regardless of location, be it on-premises or in the cloud, as a native data protection solution. Most enterprises have many dozens of data sources, making it a challenge to use the traditional, ‘one size fits all’ solution,” Taylor said.