Cohesity has announced the launch of Cohesity Agile Dev and Test, a new solution that addresses a key bottleneck organisations face in building applications at speed.

It moves away from the request-fulfill model where developers request access to production-grade data and wait – sometimes weeks – for IT operations teams to provision the data needed to build and properly test applications. Instead, the Cohesity solution provides development and test (dev/test) teams with a self-service provisioning model that gives them rapid access to backup data when they need it directly on the Cohesity DataPlatform. It also equips organisations, including IT operations, with the control mechanisms they require to ensure data remains secure and in compliance.

With Cohesity Agile Dev and Test, enterprises can instantly and securely provision zero-cost clones of traditional and modern database backups. Zero-cost cloning creates a reference to the original data, eliminating the need to create an identical, full-size copy of it. Development teams can then gain self-service access to the most current, virtual instances of backed up production data in mere minutes with no impact on production environments. This unique provisioning model plays a key role in building higher quality applications.

“The Cohesity Agile Dev and Test solution furthers the company’s mission to make backup data more productive,” said Vineet Abraham, senior vice president, engineering and product management, Cohesity. “Cohesity Agile Dev and Test is a logical extension and significant enhancement to our data management platform, not only accelerating application time to market for those adopting ‘shift-left’ principles, but also improving application security and driving greater compliance throughout the organisation.”

The Cohesity DataPlatform not only offers developers an easy way to access backup data, but it also can cut down on costs and positively impact an organisation’s compliance and security posture. By using one platform for both data protection and test data management, organisations can reduce the number of copies that are created to facilitate modern application development. Eliminating copies can do the following:

• Lower costs: Cohesity’s zero-cost clone approach can lower storage costs by dramatically reducing the number of copies that need to be stored in the first place.
• Help ensure compliance: Organisations often have no idea what personally identifiable information (PII) is contained within copies of data that are flung across environments, and they rely on a mix of home-grown scripts or tools to mask the data, which is error prone and does not scale or address compliance regulations, like GDPR. Cohesity solves this by scanning data for PII and masking it.
• Improve security: By reducing the number of physical copies, organisations can also significantly reduce their data footprint and as a direct result reduce the chance of a security breach. Organisations can also use Cohesity CyberScan to conduct vulnerability assessments that help ensure instances of data accessed by developers are secure. Additionally, through Cohesity DataPlatform, administrators can clearly define who has access to data and who does not. And, they can revoke access privileges – giving organisations greater control and visibility which can further improve their security posture.

The new Agile Dev and Test solution will be made generally available to Cohesity DataPlatform and Cohesity DataProtect customers as a separate subscription in the fourth quarter of this calendar year. The self-service capability is currently beta and the data masking capability will be available in the coming quarters.