What Google Cloud Next Got Me Thinking About Data Protection

Today's newsletter edition is sponsored by Commvault.

I spent last week watching Google Cloud Next '26 and I want to share what I think was one of the most important stories that didn't get enough attention.

Everyone came to this event for the AI announcements. The new models. The infrastructure innovations. The keynotes. And look, all of that was impressive. But while everyone was focused on what AI can do, I kept coming back to a more fundamental question.

"What happens to all of that data when something goes wrong?"

Because the reality is AI runs on data. Enterprise AI runs on massive amounts of data. And right now, a lot of organizations are building sophisticated AI workloads on cloud infrastructure that isn't fully protected. Not because they don't care. But because the tools to protect it at scale simply and affordably haven't always been there.

That changed last week.

Commvault made two announcements at Google Cloud Next '26 that I think every cloud professional, IT leader, and enterprise architect needs to know about. Not because they're flashy. Because they're foundational.

Clumio for Google Cloud

Here's something that might surprise you. Until last week, Google Cloud Storage had no native backup capability. The object storage that powers data pipelines, analytics, and cloud native applications across thousands of organizations. No built-in backup. Teams have been patching this gap together with replication and versioning, neither of which is a true backup.

Clumio for Google Cloud changes that. Purpose-built, serverless, dynamically scalable protection for Google Cloud Storage that handles billions of objects without breaking a sweat. You point it at your environment and it works. No custom builds. No stitched together workarounds.

If your organization runs workloads on Google Cloud Storage this is not a nice to have. This is a gap you need to close.

Commvault Cloud Native on Google Cloud

The second announcement is about removing every excuse not to have enterprise grade data protection.

Commvault Cloud is now live on Google Cloud Marketplace. True pay as you go. No upfront commitments. Deploy in minutes. An AI advisor called Arlie that automatically discovers your workloads, maps your entire environment, and recommends the right protection policy for each resource. And the full suite of advanced cyber resilience capabilities including threat scanning, air gap protection, and clean room recovery. All accessible from a single console.

For cloud teams that have felt like enterprise data protection was too complex or too expensive to implement this changes the equation entirely.

My Take

Here is what I think last week really told us.

We are entering a phase where AI is driving unprecedented growth in cloud data. The volumes are larger, the workloads are more critical, and the stakes are higher than they have ever been. And the organizations that are going to thrive are the ones that treat data protection as a foundation, not an afterthought.

Google Cloud is where a significant portion of that AI innovation is happening. Commvault is making a clear statement that they intend to be the data protection layer for that ecosystem. And with Clumio and Commvault Cloud Native both now available on Google Cloud, they have the product portfolio to back that up.

The question I'd leave you with is this.

When did you last audit what's actually protected in your cloud environment? Not what you think is protected. What's actually protected. Because there's often a bigger gap between those two answers than most teams want to admit.

Last week gave us better tools to close that gap. The next step is up to you.

See you in the next edition!

Greg Powell

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