Cohesity Gaia brings AI-powered backup search to Microsoft 365
Cohesity has announced the integration of Gaia, its AI-powered enterprise search assistant, into Microsoft 365 Copilot, enabling corporate users to securely extract insights from backup data across emails, documents, spreadsheets, and more within the familiar Microsoft 365 interface.
The move is set to provide employees across various departments with the ability to search and derive value from backup data, incorporating retrieval augmented generation (RAG) artificial intelligence and large language models (LLMs). This integration allows users to maintain strict access controls while benefiting from deeper organisational insights.
The integration marks the availability of Cohesity Gaia for Microsoft 365 Copilot subscribers, allowing organisations to leverage generative AI while prioritising data security. Through conversational queries within the Copilot interface, employees can access both surface-level and in-depth information stored within backup systems, supporting more informed and timely decision-making across departments.
"Generative AI is opening a world of opportunities, but to effectively tap into this, organisations need to be able to dive deep into their data. Without a single plane of data visibility, many organisations are unaware of the power of backup data in unlocking new business insights," said Paul Henaghan, Managing Director, Cohesity, Australia and New Zealand. "In bringing Cohesity Gaia together with Microsoft 365 Copilot, organisations can benefit from easy and secure extraction of both surface-level and deeper data and harness the full potential of AI technologies."
Cohesity Gaia operates by combining generative AI with LLMs and RAG techniques, offering a search experience that trawls large datasets to deliver relevant, department-specific insights based on natural language queries. This functionality is reinforced by granular, role-based access controls, restricting system responses in line with individual user permissions and ensuring ongoing protection of sensitive information.
Chantrelle Nielsen, Group Product Manager for Microsoft 365 Copilot at Microsoft, described the integration as reflecting wider trends in enterprise AI use cases.
"Generative AI has created a tipping point for enterprise AI deployments. The next phase of this journey will involve more AI-to-AI communications and expectations for transformative business outcomes," Nielsen said. "Microsoft 365 Copilot integration with Cohesity reflects this progression, giving enterprises more ways to take advantage of AI from the convenience of a single interface with a consistent user experience."
The partnership between Cohesity and Microsoft continues to be highlighted by developments such as this, which are aimed at enhancing organisational cyber resilience and offerings around data security. Jared Crowley, Senior Director of Security & Software Partners at SHI International Corp, commented on the impact of the new integration.
"Cohesity and Microsoft continue to build on their partnership, working together to safeguard data and strengthen organisations' cyber resilience. This integration extends the value proposition even further to bring new benefits by instantly putting high-quality backup data at the fingertips of users across the enterprise," Crowley said. "The end result is faster, better decision making and fresh opportunities for maximising customers' investments in Cohesity and Microsoft."
Cohesity Gaia operates on a subscription basis, and the new capabilities within Microsoft 365 Copilot are currently available at no extra cost to organisations subscribed to both services. The integration is available to users in Australia and New Zealand, with further information accessible for those interested in exploring the service in depth.
Cohesity reports that over 13,600 enterprise customers, including a significant number of companies from the Fortune 100 and Global 500, rely on the company's solutions to protect, secure, and extract insight from large volumes of organisational data. The company formed through the recent combination of Cohesity with the Veritas enterprise data protection business and is backed by several major technology partners.
