Jason Buffington .com

What’s #PowerProtect’s Superpower?

I went to #DellTechnologiesWorld expecting to hear about what’s new in #DataDomain and to dig into PP DM and PP1 as a backup or #DataProtection solution — that was the wrong lens.

Usually, a vendor’s #CyberResilience superpower is wrapped around its backup software. That’s not entirely the case for Dell; here’s why …

video transcript

I went to Dell Technologies World to understand what’s new in PowerProtect One and its underlying Data Manager and Data Domain. And honestly, I was initially tempted to narrow in on PP DM and its PP1 management framework as just one of many backup options.

That’s the wrong question.

PowerProtect is built on the foundation of Data Domain — offering integrated solutions with Data Manager and PP1, but also an open ecosystem fueled by companies like HYCU, Druva, and Commvault, among others.

Here’s the thing: there are a dozen or more ways to make copies of your file services, your virtual machines, your mainstream cloud workloads. And for most of those backup, data protection, and cyber resilience solutions, there’s something I call their superpower — what they’re known for that puts them in a buyer’s column A (consideration) versus column B (alternatives).

– If virtual machines in the datacenter are your thing, Veeam is probably a consideration.

– If you’re running a broad variety of SaaS, you’re probably looking at HYCU.

So what is PowerProtect’s superpower?

When it comes to cyber resilience, it isn’t PP DM. It isn’t even Data Domain. It’s built around PP1 — but it’s really Dell.

If you drew a circle with the backup software vendors in it, then drew a separate circle of hardware vendors with cyber resistance in their laptops and cyber detection in their storage arrays — that Venn diagram has very little overlap — except Dell. When Michael Dell and other senior leaders are talking about cyber resilience from the main stage, you know this is a pan-Dell initiative.

Which brings us back to PowerProtect. Yes, it makes backups of your mainstream datacenter workloads, hypervisors, hyperscalers. But in reality, it’s an orchestration layer that happens to also have a backup data mover (not the reverse). And when you look at what’s happening within PowerStore and CyberDetect, their Automation Platform with AI-assisted blueprints, and their modern endpoints — you start connecting some dots on what a pan-Dell cyber resilience strategy could actually look like.

It’s like owning an iPad. Alone, it’s a great device. But when you also have an iPhone, your iPad gets better. The more i-stuff that you use, the better the consumer experience. For IT and business stakeholders focused on cyber resilience (and initiatives like enterprise AI) pan-Dell seems defensibly focused on that same idea: breadth yields additive benefits, orchestrated by PowerProtect, built around the trusted foundation of Data Domain.