Co-Authored by  Sanjeev Desai, Cohesity

In today's digital-first world where both data volume and cybercrime are on the rise, the partnership between Cohesity and Cisco is taking center stage as organizations look for innovative ways to improve data security, eliminate data silos, and reduce cost overruns and complexity.

IT teams worldwide, empowered by our joint solutions, are simplifying data management-backup, archiving, disaster recovery, file and object services, dev/test, and analytics-while unlocking value from their data and realizing more ways to deter, detect, and respond to ransomware attacks.

Our team now has the freedom "to focus on valuable projects while resting easy because our environment is secure and data is restored in minutes," explains Fran?ois Lepage, cybersecurity and infrastructure manager at The Master Group, when asked about the value his company is realizing since deploying joint Cohesity and Cisco solutions.

"We've significantly simplified data management and gained new insights and efficiencies across the board, returning tremendous benefits to our entire organization," he says. And the largest independent HVAC/R distributor in Canada isn't alone. Organizations worldwide are experiencing the benefits of the strong partnership.

After a major IT transformation, the U.K.'s Stockport NHS Foundation Trust required a solution to help it deliver a more capable backup and recovery operation for its hospitals and a range of community health services, while also prioritizing security, simplicity, and data governance. Because the trust's new storage systems were based on Cisco HyperFlex, IT wanted a modern data management solution with capabilities to support future migration to the cloud. Cohesity on Cisco UCS was quickly identified as a clear choice due, in part, to its exceptional disaster recovery and security functionality. The trust had previously fallen victim to a ransomware attack and suffered from long overnight restores, which it was keen to not repeat.

"It could've been COVID, ransomware, or a flood, but getting our essential systems back up and running was crucial. Having seen other backup solutions, Cohesity was the simplest and easiest to use with the best data management capabilities. What would take days now takes minutes or hours, which is very important for a small IT team," says Bhekimpi Sibanda, IT technical architect at Stockport NHS Foundation Trust.

In the U.S., Kevin Rue, senior systems engineer at Methodist Health System makes this real-world comparison: "Replacing our seven-year-old solution with Cohesity on Cisco UCS was like going from a Chevy truck to a brand-new Lexus." His organization "got more efficiencies plus new capabilities such as scalability, Office 365 support, ease of use, and customized reporting that are important to our healthcare system," he says.

Customer success stats speak volumes

The Cohesity and Cisco SolutionsPlus partnership has now been in place for well over a year. Cisco is a validated Cohesity design partner, reseller, support partner, and customer, and Cisco Investments has invested in Cohesity. As we head toward our second anniversary, it's the success of our joint customers that calls for even greater recognition. Here's why.

Enterprises globally across industries have been sharing their perspectives on the power of our partnership and the results their organizations are experiencing. Here is just a sampling of the outcomes they've shared with us:

• 75% reduction in time for full backups
• 125 days of IT productivity returned
• 900% data recovery time improvement
• Reduced PACS TCO for radiology images and videos
• Record-time restores-from hours to minutes
• Cost predictability without forklift upgrades
• Confidence in their ability to defend backup data from ransomware attacks

And this list isn't exhaustive. Customers transitioning from legacy point products have been eager to share how the joint solutions simplified operations and cost savings, reducing their TCO, and how the partnership is providing a strategic data management path forward.

Craig Taylor, IT director at Quantium says his expectations were exceeded after deploying the "leading-edge data management solution that will carry us forward for future requirements and beyond backup and recovery."

And Sky Lakes Medical Center believes the partnership is helping its IT team drive efficiency. "We are getting more work done than ever, which I attribute to both our talented team and the very strategic investments we've made in Cisco and Cohesity," says John Gaede, director of IS, Sky Lakes Medical Center. He adds, "There is 100% consensus among our engineers that Cohesity works reliably, is easy to use, and we can all be productive with it."

Cisco IT has also embraced the solution internally to help deliver the ultimate client experience by solving enterprise data management gaps. The team agrees, "Cohesity on Cisco UCS drives operational excellence. Its self-service capabilities, coupled with a simplified and scale-out architecture, make it easy to deploy backup services."

Moreover, "The combined efficiency of Cohesity software and power of Cisco UCS provides an integrated solution that reduces costs, streamlines data management, and speeds deployment, propelling our Cisco-on-Cisco story forward as we navigate the effective management of unstructured data growth," according to IT staff.

Independently, a Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact? (TEI) study recently reported that our joint solution delivers an overall return on investment (ROI) of 150% in three years. The payback period was just a year, with total benefits of US$2.63 million realized in present value.

Discover what our solutions can do for you

Backed by Cisco support, our joint Cohesity and Cisco solutions, as seen in Figure 1, are seamlessly integrated, delivering a single, modern data management platform for a variety of use cases. For customers, they're easy to scale and manage, eliminate mass data fragmentation, and are ideal for organizations transitioning to hybrid and multicloud operations.

If you're looking for greater data consolidation to dramatically reduce TCO, increase efficiency across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, and mitigate risk to your data from cyberattacks, you need not look further than Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs), including data protection for Cisco HyperFlex, backup and file services on Cisco UCS storage servers, and video surveillance with Milestone XProtect.

Learn more about the Cisco and Cohesity partnership as well as our joint solutions