Insights from Vasu Murthy: Driving Innovation and AI at Cohesity

Vasu Murthy's Expertise and Career Journey

Vasu Murthy, Senior Vice President and Chief Product Officer at Cohesity, brings over 25 years of experience in enterprise software, specializing in data security, protection, and analytics. His career includes leadership roles at Rubrik, Oracle, and the startup DataScaler, which he co-founded and later sold to Oracle. These experiences have shaped his approach to product development and innovation.

Lessons from Startup to Enterprise

Murthy emphasizes the importance of asking the right questions to find product-market fit. Instead of asking customers what they would like or if they would use a product, he focuses on uncovering the real problems they face daily, such as inefficient processes or costly manual tasks. This approach helps identify valuable problems worth solving.

Transitioning through Transformational Missions

Murthy describes his career as a series of missions, each lasting 2-3 years with specific business goals. After completing multiple projects at Oracle, he sought the dynamic environment of startups, joining Rubrik and later moving to Cohesity after Rubrik's IPO. He values challenges that push growth and innovation.

The Opportunity at Cohesity

The acquisition of Veritas' enterprise data protection business presented a unique challenge for Murthy. His role includes integrating the two companies, ensuring a smooth transition for customers, influencing product development, and shaping company culture during this transformation.

Priorities as Chief Product Officer Amid Acquisition

Understanding both customer and employee mindsets is crucial for effective communication and leadership. Murthy aims to accelerate innovation and guide Cohesity’s customers towards the future of data security and AI, expanding the company's market presence.

AI as a Core Component of Cohesity

Cohesity embeds AI throughout its platform—from anomaly detection to cyber recovery acceleration. Managing hundreds of exabytes of data allows Cohesity to deliver AI-driven insights. The platform supports multiple applications, enabling customers to leverage their data effectively.

Cohesity Gaia and Managing Unstructured Data

With 80% of enterprise data being unstructured and difficult to analyze, Cohesity developed Gaia, a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) application. Gaia collects, cleans, and secures data, allowing users to interact via natural language and gain valuable insights, unifying knowledge across various data types and locations.

Addressing Data Sovereignty and On-Premises Solutions

Murthy highlights concerns about data sovereignty in the AI era, where countries want control over data stored within their borders. Cohesity offers on-premises data management solutions, alleviating worries about cloud-hosted AI services and data access, especially when combined with hardware partnerships including NVIDIA.

Collaboration Across Teams for AI-Driven Products

Success depends on harmony between product, design, and documentation teams. Early involvement of all stakeholders and AI-assisted workflows help prioritize ideas, enhance customer experience, and reduce time spent on documentation, ensuring coherent AI-first product launches.

Prioritization Frameworks for Product Development

Murthy categorizes products into three types: new products needing innovation focus, core products balancing innovation and customer pain points, and mature products emphasizing pain point resolution and technical debt management. This framework guides resource allocation and development strategies.

Future Goals and Innovations

The integration of Cohesity and Veritas' products is progressing rapidly, enabled by compatible container and microservice architectures. Over the next 12 to 18 months, Cohesity aims to unify workload support, data security, and AI services across all customers. A key upcoming product is RecoveryAgent, an AI-powered cyber orchestration tool designed for cyber recovery preparation, testing, and automation.

Advice for CPOs in the AI Era

Murthy advises that simply adding AI to improve workflows offers limited value. True AI differentiation requires rethinking workflows fundamentally driven by AI. While AI technology is evolving, ensuring accuracy and reliability demands continuous validation and monitoring. The real opportunity lies in AI and data infrastructure development.

For more information, readers are encouraged to visit Cohesity.