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When did cyber resilience stop being a technical insurance policy and start turning into a conversation for the boardroom?
At a time when shop floors grind to a halt for days, hospital staff juggle manual paperwork after digital lockouts, and criminal gangs auction data to the highest bidder, backup alone is no longer enough.
On a recent IT Press Tour in Silicon Valley, Techopedia sat down with Sanjay Poonen, CEO and President of Cohesity, to learn more about why the industry needs a stronger answer.
Key Takeaways
- Backup alone is outdated. Resilience and insight now share the spotlight.
- Cohesity built the first RAG on backup data, unlocking hidden intelligence.
- Nvidia partnership pushes secure, real-time AI directly on protected data.
- Complexity remains the barrier, but integrated platforms promise smoother adoption.
- Engaged people, not just smart tech, keep recovery and trust strong.
From One Tool to a Full Safety Net
According to Sanjay Poonen, we need a model where fast recovery pairs with artificial intelligence (AI) to spot threats before they spread and to turn backup stores into living business insights.
Poonen told Techopedia:
“I spent some time with Satya Nadella, whom I’ve known for years, and said, ‘What if we could use OpenAI’s ChatGPT on our backup data?’ And he opened my eyes to this technique called retrieval augmented generation (RAG).”
From that conversation, the teams at Cohesity studied and went on to build the world’s first RAG capability on top of backup data. “We then started working not just with Microsoft, AWS, and Google, but also Nvidia, which chose to invest in us,” Poonen said.
The moment Jensen Huang realized what we were doing with RAG on top of the backup day, he said, “I’d like you to build that RAG application on top of the Nvidia Enterprise AI software platform.”
Sanjay Poonen remembered:
“We just had an all-hands meeting this morning where Jensen spoke to us. It was a video recording, but he spoke to the entire company about his excitement in the category. Jensen is currently the most respected name in AI worldwide. So we’re very proud that Nvidia is an investor in the company, that Nvidia’s working with us.”
Cohesity’s story is an interesting lesson in timing. While traditional players focused on keeping backups reliable but passive, Cohesity gambled early that resilience and zero-trust design would converge into the same conversation.
It wasn’t just about fixing the mess after a breach but also about ensuring hackers couldn’t tamper with the recovery lifeline itself. That bet now feels prophetic, as modern ransomware strains specifically target backup systems.
Predictably, the merger with Veritas’s NetBackup catapulted Cohesity to a $2 billion run rate, 13,000 customers, and a footprint spanning finance, retail, healthcare, and government.
Why Recovery Alone No Longer Cuts It
For decades, backup was the sleepy corner of the IT industry. It mattered, but it didn’t get top billing at executive retreats. Those days are over. Criminal syndicates realized that hitting backups is the easiest way to push victims into paying up. Once attackers corrupt or encrypt your fallback plan, your choices shrink fast.
Companies that thought, “We’ll just restore from last night’s copy,” discovered that recovery could take days, not hours. All of which is a disaster when every extra hour offline means lost sales or canceled surgeries.
Boards are no longer asking, “Do we have a backup?” They now ask, “Can we recover instantly, even if we’re already compromised, and can we learn from it so we don’t get hit again?” This is where Cohesity pitches its next chapter.
Equally important, it turns that static vault into a fresh source of competitive insight. It’s a shift from viewing backup as a dusty warehouse to treating it as live, trusted data ready to support everything from contract analysis to compliance audits.
At first glance, Nvidia and Cohesity might sound like an odd couple. One creates top GPUs for AI models, while the other traditionally guards backup files. But scratch the surface and the logic clicks. Modern AI relies on data, and backups hold vast amounts of structured information that few firms utilize effectively.
Complexity Means It’s Still a Tough Nut to Crack
Integrating detection, backup, AI, and regulatory controls into a single pane of glass remains a challenge, especially for firms managing on-premises data, public clouds, and legacy infrastructure. Many legacy businesses have deep silos that resist the “one stack to rule them all” vision.
However, Sanjay sees the Veritas acquisition not as a trophy but as raw material. NetBackup has thousands of connectors that would have taken Cohesity years to build.
Now, they combine that power with their zero-trust design and integrated architecture. It’s like moving from a powerful Windows PC to an iPhone experience where everything fits together seamlessly.
This may sound neat on a slide deck, but merging tech teams, cultures, and customer contracts is no small feat. Sanjay openly calls culture the single point of failure if handled poorly.
The Human Factor Few CEOs Discuss
AI gets the headlines, but talk to Sanjay for ten minutes, and you realize he sees humans as the deeper moat. It’s rare to hear a CEO speak about employees with more passion than new code releases.
Sanjay Poonen said:
“You can build great products, and you can serve customers, but I want our employees engaged. You try to make as many of our 5,500-plus employees happy, but you know, some people will always have issues. However, you want to ensure that they’re engaged and that we’re listening to them. We’re trying our best to make this the best possible place they could work and make this a beautiful work experience.”
From the outside looking in, the long-term bet is that highly engaged people who care about the customer will build better automation, more intelligent detection, and more useful AI.
In a sector where some firms let tools do the talking, Cohesity’s combination of innovation and customer love works best when humans lead the charge.
So, will every board adopt resilience plus intelligence? Not overnight.
Some firms still gamble on cheap storage and minimal planning, only to have the cost become painfully clear with a breach.
Others wait for regulators to force their hand. But the trend is undeniable. Fines are increasing, downtime is reputational poison, and the public expects you to recover quickly.
The Bottom Line
With Nvidia, Microsoft, and Google all vying for a position in this field, the technology arms race will continue to raise the baseline. Ultimately, firms that view backup as a cost sink will continue to fall behind. Those who treat it as a living, AI-powered record of the business will find fresh value that no competitor can copy.
Sanjay put it plainly: “One day, I want to walk through an airport and see ads that say: your favorite bank relies on Cohesity. Your hospital does, too. Your airline trusts us to sleep well at night. That’s when we know we’ve done our job.”
