Cohesity's AI Revolution: How Developers Can Harness RAG-Powered Data Intelligence
Following their strategic acquisition of Veritas NetBackup, Cohesity has emerged as a formidable force in AI-powered data security, offering developers unprecedented opportunities to build intelligent applications that leverage enterprise backup data. At their recent presentation to the IT Press Tour, the company unveiled compelling developer-focused capabilities that could reshape how we think about data-driven applications.
The Platform Foundation: More Than Just Backup
Cohesity's approach differs fundamentally from traditional backup vendors. Their Data Cloud platform serves as a unified foundation for data protection, security, and insights—creating what they call "data gravity" that attracts additional capabilities. For developers, this means access to a comprehensive data layer that spans on-premises, cloud, and edge environments without the complexity of managing multiple storage systems.
The platform's architecture is built on SpanFS, Cohesity's distributed file system, which provides the scale and performance necessary for modern applications. With over 100 exabytes under management compared to competitors like Veeam (18 EB) and Rubrik (1 EB), Cohesity offers developers access to an unprecedented scale of enterprise data.
Gaia: RAG-Powered Development Opportunities
The star of Cohesity's AI portfolio is Gaia, a generative AI application that implements retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to make backup data searchable through natural language queries. For developers, this opens fascinating possibilities for building applications that can:
Extract Business Intelligence from Historical Data: Imagine building applications that can query years of backup data to identify trends, compliance issues, or business opportunities. Gaia's RAG implementation means developers don't need to build complex indexing systems—the platform handles semantic search across millions of documents instantly.
Enhance Compliance and E-Discovery Applications: Developers working on legal tech or compliance platforms can leverage Gaia's ability to search through massive document repositories, reducing the time needed for discovery processes from weeks to hours.
Build Knowledge Management Systems: Enterprise applications can tap into organizational knowledge stored in backup systems, enabling employees to find information across historical data that might otherwise be inaccessible.
Security-First Development with Quantum-Proof Architecture
Cohesity's implementation of quantum-proof encryption in NetBackup 11.0 represents a forward-thinking approach that developers should consider today. The platform provides:
Immutable Data Storage: Applications requiring audit trails or compliance can leverage Cohesity's immutable backup systems to ensure data integrity. This is particularly valuable for blockchain applications, financial systems, or any application where data tampering must be prevented.
Zero-Trust Architecture: The platform's built-in zero-trust principles mean developers can build applications with confidence that the underlying data layer implements security best practices including multi-factor authentication, role-based access controls, and encryption at rest and in transit.
Cyber Resilience by Design: Cohesity's five-step cyber resilience framework (Protect, Strengthen, Respond, Practice, Optimize) provides developers with a roadmap for building applications that can survive and recover from cyber attacks.
Multi-Cloud Development Simplified
One of the most compelling aspects for developers is Cohesity's unified approach to multi-cloud data protection. Rather than building applications that must account for different backup systems across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and on-premises environments, developers can rely on a single API and data model.
The platform supports over 1,100 connectors, meaning applications can access data from virtually any enterprise system through a consistent interface. This dramatically reduces the complexity of building applications that span multiple cloud environments or need to access data from diverse sources.
API Integration and Development Tools
While Cohesity didn't provide extensive details about their developer APIs during the presentation, the company's service-oriented architecture suggests robust programmatic access. The containerized runtime environment and microservices approach indicate that developers should expect:
- RESTful APIs for data access and management
- SDK support for major programming languages
- Webhook capabilities for real-time event notifications
- GraphQL or similar query interfaces for complex data retrieval
Recovery Agent: Automated Resilience
Cohesity's Recovery Agent represents an evolution in how applications can handle disaster recovery. Instead of manual recovery processes, developers can build applications that automatically orchestrate recovery workflows, including:
- Automated threat scanning of backup data
- Clean room testing environments for validation
- Orchestrated application recovery with clean configurations and data
Looking Forward: The Ecosystem Play
Cohesity's three-pillar AI strategy—Platform, Insights, and Ecosystem—suggests they're building toward a comprehensive developer ecosystem. The Ecosystem pillar specifically focuses on "providing tools & services for customers to deliver AI to their business," indicating future developer-focused offerings.
For forward-thinking developers, Cohesity's platform offers an opportunity to build applications that leverage enterprise data at unprecedented scale while maintaining security and compliance requirements. As AI continues to reshape how we interact with data, platforms like Cohesity's that combine massive data repositories with intelligent access capabilities will become increasingly valuable.
The acquisition of Veritas NetBackup brings additional enterprise credibility and expanded workload support, making Cohesity's platform an increasingly attractive foundation for enterprise application development. Developers who understand how to leverage these capabilities today will be well-positioned as data-driven AI applications become the norm rather than the exception.
