Not long after Actifio Inc. was founded in 2009, the company came to a critical realization.

The firm had pioneered the field of copy data management based on the premise that managing more data didn’t mean more storage, and the best place to capture data was in backup using its software platform. Yet it also knew data was a strategic asset, becoming more important as users migrated applications to the cloud infrastructure.

“We figured this out almost nine years ago,” said Ash Ashutosh (pictured), founder and chief executive officer of Actifio. “The use of data, which is what actual users see, has become one of the killer apps for anybody who is running a cloud. Right behind that, there’s an entire ecosystem around supplying that data to applications that becomes really important.”

Ashutosh spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Actifio Data Driven event in Boston. They discussed why the company has no plans to enter the storage systems business and how Actifio’s solution offers an advantage over a similar approach by large cloud platform providers (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

No plans to supply storage systems

Actifio now delivers data as a service to 3,600 enterprise customers across 38 countries, using its software platform to create data pipelines. The company’s founder steadfastly maintains that it will continue to provide a data-management solution without becoming a storage systems supplier.

“We fundamentally believe we’re not going to build another storage system,” Ashutosh said. “There’s a big shift in how data is the new infrastructure, and that requires a very different approach than build a box. When you build a box, fundamentally you create another silo.”

Actifio is certainly not the only company to recognize the value of data as infrastructure. Major players, such as Amazon Web Services Inc., have created their own backup systems tailored for the cloud. Is Actifio’s founder worried about how this could affect his business down the line?

“If I were Amazon, I would focus on my platform, not 15 other platforms you want to support,” Ashutosh said. “We focus on the 15 other platforms you do want to support. It takes a little while to go up the stack, and it’s a lot easier for somebody like us to come down from the stack.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Actifio Data Driven event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Actifio Data Driven event. Neither Actifio Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE