Staying competitive in fast-paced global markets is forcing businesses to rethink do-it-yourself approaches and giving rise to API-first thinking.
An application programming interface (API)-first solution is built for integration. It’s extensible, enabling consistent, wide-ranging adoption and compatibility with apps and services (existing and in development), which in turn strengthens the platform while allowing it to be customized to meet enterprise needs.
Today, an API-first approach as a core next-gen data management tenet is becoming a business game changer for organizations looking to automate tasks and derive new insights from their data faster.
The Value of Extensibility
Data management encompasses many mission-critical tasks — backup and recovery, data security and governance, disaster recovery, file and object services, data analytics, and more — making it complex and inefficient to run standalone products across increasingly hybrid cloud environments. A single, standalone legacy solution simply can’t deliver the wide-ranging host of discrete functionality as well as specialized capabilities such as vulnerability scanning, data masking, DevSecOps monitoring and more that a next-gen data management platform does.
That’s because only a next-gen data management platform is designed to be “API first” for third-party extensibility.
“You should be able to take apps from third parties and run them on the platform, not outside the platform,” explains Cohesity CEO and Founder Mohit Aron. “There should also be integrations with other vendors, like VMware and ServiceNow, and you should benefit from those integrations.”
Third-Party Extensibility in the Real World
Case in point: Hyatt virtualized 70% of its expansive, growing IT environment but had a hard time backing up its virtualized servers. Its existing solution required manual steps and reboots to back up Hyatt’s virtual machines, so the company needed a modern approach and chose Cohesity’s next-gen data management platform, which fully integrates with VMware vCenter.
As an API-first platform, Cohesity integrates VMware the way it was intended using built-in technology. Its ability to work directly with vCenter to perform agentless backups makes the process faster and easier. Now Hyatt is considering Cohesity for other use cases.
Cohesity’s native integration with third-party applications will continue to simplify our entire data management environment. We used to consider backup and unstructured data to be dark data. Cohesity opens up a whole new world of insights to begin to leverage backup and unstructured data for business value while solving mass data fragmentation challenges in the enterprise, said a Hyatt senior storage and virtualization engineer.
Hyatt is just one of the enterprises taking advantage of third-party extensibility in the Cohesity next-gen data management platform.
Future-Proofing Through Apps and Integrations
A next-gen data management platform should seamlessly integrate popular third-party and custom-developed apps, including automation and orchestration tools, for greater data security, simplified compliance, improved visibility, and richer data analysis.
In the case of analytics, according to research firm the Everest Group, “A best-in-class data platform offers seamless integrations with third-party analytics and reporting tools, which offer insights on potential threats and vulnerabilities and manage compliance.”
And the platform makes the apps available through an integrated, online store so IT teams can easily discover them and add their capabilities to the platform. This third-party extensibility allows enterprises to:
- Utilize the power of apps for all their data – With a simplified, holistic view of all their data, organizations can run data management apps and services against any of it within the same on-prem environment.
- Benefit from existing integrations – In many situations, the wheel has already been invented. With an API-first next-gen data management platform, enterprises can take advantage of pre-built, automated workflows and API integrations with established tools to streamline operations.
- Easily add new capabilities by building their own – Beyond integration of existing apps, developers using the platform can exploit its SDK and a rich set of RESTful APIs to easily incorporate next-gen data management functions.
Get Started on Your API-First Data Management Journey
The place to start is the Cohesity Marketplace, where users of the next-gen data management platform can easily find and use apps and integrations designed to add functionality and derive business insights for security, compliance, analytics, and more. Available apps and integrations work with solutions such as Cisco SecureX, Entrust KeyControl, Fortanix Data Security Manager, ServiceNow, Tenable CyberScan, VMware Cloud Director, DataMasque, and others.
For IT teams looking to develop their own apps and integrations for the Cohesity platform, the Marketplace provides an entrée into the Developer Portal, with step-by-step guidance for building apps that run on the same platform that consolidates their massive volumes of backup and unstructured data.
Running apps directly on the Cohesity next-gen data management platform prevents data silos and solves mass data fragmentation. It enhances visibility and data compliance because the apps span all structured and unstructured data. Ultimately, third-party extensibility helps future-proof data management by automating tasks and delivering fresh insights.
To learn how next-gen data management incorporates third-party extensibility, visit Cohesity.
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