Surviving Weekend at Bernie’s: A Lesson in Data Protection

A data platform that streamlines backup and recovery with value creation use cases to come. But first, Weekend at Bernie’s.

In 2007, ten years after the company was founded, Netflix was slinging rentals of Weekend at Bernie’s in red envelopes by mail. Anyone remember the last Netflix DVD that they failed to return? Not saying mine was Weekend at Bernie’s, but it very well could have been. In 2007, Netflix pivoted to streaming services. As early as 2011, they realized that their digital content suppliers would ultimately be their competitors and they shifted from a reliance on third-party content to becoming a producer of original content. In July of this year, Netflix broke HBO’s record for the most Emmy nominations.

Netflix started not with the end game of disrupting Blockbuster but with the full intention of streaming when network bandwidth and digital content was readily available. After all, their name from the get-go was Netflix, not DVDsDirect.com. In the early innings, they executed on short term goals and remained customer, not competition, focused. They also had the good fortune of a massive market category and a few tired, old competitors they could disrupt early on. Here at Clumio, there is a lot of neat stuff we aim to deliver. There is also a vast amount of low hanging fruit out there to harvest as well.

For those who have spent time in the data protection space and don’t know Clumio:

• We’re relentlessly focused on simplifying data protection with a secure, air-gapped backup and recovery service for a world where customer data is increasingly distributed across clouds, SaaS and on-premises realms. We’re also here for a world where the bitcoin-seeking boogie man is just as much of a threat as a natural disaster.
• We’re a company focused on customer delight. We believe our consumers shouldn’t put an ounce of thought or time into a use case as tactical and routine as data protection. Clumio can be turned on in 15 minutes and our customers can go focus on more important things to drive their businesses forward.
• We’re a platform company with our eyes to the horizon. We seek to deliver value creation opportunities as a by-product of our data protection offering. Think analytics and ETL. Think multi-cloud data management and cloud arbitrage. Our follow-on acts are why this author joined and why smart people with backgrounds in search, security, analytics and cloud are steering the company, on our board or have voted for us with their wallets.

For the analysts and my friends and family members who might not know much about Clumio:

• Clumio for VMware Protection = Weekend at Bernie’s mailed in a Red Netflix Envelope. Protecting on-premises assets is our “DVD in a red envelope” use case. It’s our “right now” interest simplifying and disrupting the private cloud data protection market, and it’s a massive market that’s ripe for disruption.
• Clumio for Cloud Native Services and SaaS Protection = Streaming The Office on Netflix. This is an emerging market as organizations move to public cloud and SaaS and find that the native data protection services offered by traditional providers are purpose-built for the data center, short on functionality and super costly.
• Clumio Data Platform = Netflix Studios. I’m going to venture a guess that Ozark helps drive far more consumers to the Netflix service than Weekend at Bernie’s. Over time you will see us evolve from being solely focused on data protection to opening up the platform to afford customers and their partners the opportunity to derive greater value than just operational recovery. The proof points and hints are already there if you look for them.

Thanks for putting up with this author’s incessant desire to trot out analogies. It’s just that signing up for and deploying a protection strategy with Clumio is about as uninvolved as signing up for Netflix. And just like the Netflix service, new content and goodness arrives while you sleep.