Rubrik today announced its Andes 5.1 release, expanding the cloud data management provider's offerings to include data governance, disaster recovery orchestration, and continuous data protection by way of two new (beta) additions to its platform: Polaris Sonar software-as-a-service (SaaS) and Polaris AppFlow.

"With the release of Andes 5.1, we’re significantly expanding our capabilities beyond Cloud Data Management to give customers more control over their data while also increasing the value of this data," said Shay Mowlem, SVP of product and strategy at Rubrik, in an emailed response to questions.

Rubrik has been a leader in cloud data management since entering the space five years ago. Earlier this year it scored a lucrative Series E funding round that raked in $261 million and pushed its valuation to $3.3 billion. 

Polaris Sonar

Polaris Sonar is a new SaaS tool in Andes 5.1 that utilizes machine learning (ML) to discover, classify, and report on sensitive data across an enterprise's IT environment. 

"Enterprises had typically tackled data governance on a reactive basis employing a disjointed, ad hoc approach," Mowlem said.

To establish a more proactive approach to data governance, "organizations need to automate insights to help them meet these requirements so they can focus on creating value for their customers," he explained.

Sonar aims to temper the risk of data breaches, tracking sensitive data in compliance with data privacy regulations such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI/DSS), the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and data privacy requirements such as the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). 

Rubrik Polaris Sonar beta customers of Sioux Falls, South Dakota have eliminated manual scripting and spreadsheet management, achieving operational savings of more than 90% as a result of integrating Sonar, the company claims. 

Polaris  AppFlows

Andes 5.1 also adds Polaris AppFlows, which provides disaster recovery orchestration, testing, and application migration, backing up data and replicating it to Amazon Web Services (AWS). It also provides continuous data protection across Rubrik Cloud Data Management (RCDM) and the Rubrik Polaris SaaS platform. 

It enables enterprises to convert virtual machine snapshots into Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances on an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), to provide cloud-native protection that automates failback for applications running on AWS. 

Crowding in the Cloud

Rubrik competes against firms like Cohesity, Commvault, Dell EMC, and new kid on the block, Clumio, who just yesterday announced $51 million in funding as it introduced its SaaS backup platform.

Gartner forecasts that more than 80% of enterprise data will be stored in scale-out storage systems in enterprise and cloud data centers by 2021, up from 30% in 2017.