How HYCU And Dell Turn Backups Into Cyber Intelligence

Your backup system is sitting on a gold mine and most companies are treating it like a fire extinguisher behind glass. From the floor of Dell Technologies World, we talk with Simon Taylor CEO of HYCU about their next chapter: HYCU Air, an AI resiliency platform designed to turn SaaS backup data into something you can actually interrogate, learn from, and use to stay ahead of cyber risk. 

We dig into the big idea that the most valuable asset is not the LLM itself, but the unique datasets inside your systems of record. HYCU Air pairs a knowledge graph and context engine with an LLM so you can ask natural-language questions of your backup history, the same way you would investigate a security camera recording. That reframes data protection from “pay for recovery” to “use backup data every day” across modern cloud applications, collaboration tools, and enterprise SaaS sprawl. 

Then we get practical: cybersecurity posture management when AI agents and integrations are “running amok,” spotting policy drift, and using data classification to find sensitive data like PII that never should have been where it ended up. We also share what we’re hearing from customers, why demand is accelerating, and how this approach starts to look like the “brain of an organization” by connecting corporate memory across dozens of SaaS services. 

If you want to see where AI resiliency is heading, hit play, share this with a security or IT leader, and leave a review with the one question you wish your backups could answer.

Transcript

Live From Dell Technologies World

SPEAKER_00 0:01

And we are live at Dell Technologies World with Haiku. Simon, how are you? Evan, doing great. Great to be here and great to see you again, my friend. Well, great to see you in action uh in your partnership, all this innovation with Dell.

HYCU And Dell Partnership Update

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Um, maybe describe uh some of the work you're doing with Dell and also how do you describe haiku these days? You've you've been uh busy.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

We've been very busy. You know, it's great to be back with our good friends at Dell. As you know, we are already on the ETC price list, which has been phenomenal for us. It's allowed us to engage with Dell customers and partners around the planet. Today we've got 4,800 customers in 76 countries, and we are growing stronger than ever before.

What HYCU Air Actually Is

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Um, but you know, the the big change, the big watershed moment for haiku this year is of course the launch of what we're calling Haiku Air, Haiku's AI resiliency platform. Haiku is going from being the SaaS player with 106 different SaaS applications protected to the world's number one leader in AI resiliency. Because what we've realized is that all of this agent deployment is changing the game that comes to services of record. People need to be able to do more than just back up and recover their data. They need to be able to leverage the data they have within those SaaS platforms and protect it at machine speed, and that's exactly what Haiku is here to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Fantastic.

Why Backup Data Becomes AI Value

SPEAKER_00 1:26

And talk about the problems that Haiku Air is solving that traditional backup or data protection tools aren't addressing well.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Yeah. You know, I was talking to my 13-year-old son the other day about exactly this, and he kept saying to me, Simon, Dad, I don't understand. I don't understand. What do you guys do? And I said, think of it like this. You know, we're sitting at a table and there's a camera over the table, a security camera. Okay, and somebody sticks some gum under the table. Well, if there is a security guard watching the camera and watching the monitor at that moment, they're gonna catch it. But if that gum was stuck there a week ago, two weeks ago, two years ago, or even, God help us, two decades ago, well, unless you've got the backup tapes, you're never gonna know who committed the crime. And that's the major problem that Heikel solves. He realized the single most powerful and valuable asset today is not the LLM. The LLMs are commoditized, they're all essentially doing the same thing with incremental leaks. It's actually the data sets themselves that represent a gold mine when it comes to actual levels of value. So and it said very differently, the more custom and unique your data set is, the more valuable it should be to you and your company. So haiku realizing this understood that we've been protecting 106 different applications that nobody else in the world is protecting them. So, what we did is we added a knowledge graph and a context engine, put an LLM on top of that, and called it Haiku Air so that in natural language you can now speak to your backup data. So yeah, oh no, it's it's unbelievable. The first time the guy showed it to me, I said, This can't be real. How did you do this? And the answer, of course, is AI. But the answer is also we've spent nine years building the world's most comprehensive data set on planet Earth. And so when you put AI on top of that, you've got something very special indeed. Now, Evan, you asked me what problems we're actually solving with all that great

Cyber Intelligence From Your Backups

SPEAKER_01 3:23

information. And I'll tell you, you can solve so many problems, it's a vast universe. But what we are focusing on here with Hyper is cyber intelligence, and I would break that down into three different ways. One, security posture management with all these agents running amok, with all these different apps and databases, with data silos sprawl going on. Who the heck knows where your data is and what's happening to it? Well, you can actually go in and mask for language and say who is misbehaving with their data, who is acting out of policy? Is there policy drift? You know, use case number two, you can go in and look at data classification. You could say to it, who's got data they shouldn't have, who's got social security numbers and personally identifiable information sitting on a laptop. It's all there. The records are all there in the backups. We just couldn't ask for it until today. And so I think you know, Haiku Air is a watershed moment, the world of data protection. It's a watershed moment, the world of cybersecurity. We've even built a customizable agent dart so that you can add additional agents that will allow you to ask your own questions and derive your unique value from the actual platform. So the last thing I'll say, Evan, and this is super important. People have been backing up data for donkeys years, as my mother would say. And uh, you know, they only did it for one reason, which was recovery. The recovery was never enough. We're taking data protection from the world of life insurance sales to the world of health and health insurance and health care. Because we're gonna help you to take care of your business. We're gonna stop making you pay just for the recovery. You're gonna get all of this unique value with the data back up, all as a part of being a hydrocustomer. So it truly is a very, very exciting time for us. Uh, and as always, I'm just thrilled to share it with you.

Customer Demand And Early Results

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Fantastic. And what's been the feedback from customers and from your partnership with Dell? Um, what's the demand been like?

SPEAKER_01 5:20

You know, I was at in Minneapolis with Dell last week at their cloud field days, uh, and I got up in front of about 100 customers and orders, and they literally let out a cheer when I said, do more with your backup date. Because you know, people have been paying for this stuff forever, and it was always just about the recovery. The idea that they can now extract all this additional incremental value that will keep them and their companies safe, it was a game changer. So we you know, the response has been incredible. We've had a hundred uh companies in the global 2000 already added to our wait list. We've got 10 Fortune 500 companies who have already tried it out and are using it. By the end of this year, we believe this will be about 25% of hypo's revenue uh overall. I mean, the demand is that drastic. We're seeing AI levels of growth attached purely to the haiku air platform.

Tackling SaaS Sprawl With Context

SPEAKER_00 6:10

That is fantastic. And you know, customers are still struggling with uh a SaaS sprawl and cloud complexity. I assume this might help given the uh integration challenges in the enterprise.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Well, Evan, you'll remember I wrote that book, you know, averting the SaaS data apocalypse a couple of years ago. And of course, we didn't avert it at all. We went deeper and deeper, and we've actually put it on steroids with AI. And so I think what customers are rightly asking for is to get more from their data protection. Recovery is great, but they want to know in advance proactively, you know, where is the next attack coming from? You know, where are the risks in my business? How can I make sure that I'm making the right business and cyber decisions to protect my employees and our customers? And so I think by adding this haiku air layer on top of your backup and recovery, it's a game changer. It really is a watershed moment. And the last thing I'll say is, you know, a lot of people come to me and they say, you know, Simon, this is great. Are you worried about your competitors and so on and so forth? And I say to them, look, you know, what we are constructing is effectively the brain of an organization. If you imagine a human brain and then imagine that every area of that brain is a different SaaS service or cloud service, that comprises the entirety of the corporate memory bank of an organization. Well, if you try to do that with just your on-prem file data, you're gonna be uh, let's say, at a loss to remember all of the key insights that haiku air is giving up. So this is building on the 106 different backup services that we spent the last decade constructing. And now we're gonna give our customers a thousand times the level of value with AI.

How To Get Access And Timeline

SPEAKER_00 7:49

Fantastic. So, how can customers, partners, developers start taking advantage of Haiku Air? And when can they start taking advantage? What's uh what's the timeline?

SPEAKER_01 7:59

We're here showing it off at Dell Tech World in Las Vegas today. But I'd recommend for all customers and partners and you know, new prospects, jump on to www.hycu.com. That's www.haiku.com. Join the wait list, get activated, take a look at this thing, and find out how to make your backups do more for you.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Well, that's kind of a mic drop moment, and I know you're a busy man. Uh, I think I'd love to check in uh maybe after the show and get a final update and perspective. How's

The Shift To Careful AI Adoption

SPEAKER_00 8:29

the energy uh this week? And uh we've got a day or two left. What's what else is on your mind? You know, we are shaking improved another here in Las Vegas.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

I'll tell you, um, you know, we come every year with Dell and we love it. You know, but I would say that the energy around AI and cybersecurity has never been stronger. I think it's gone from a world of sort of uh naive exploration to careful adoption. And I think in a world of careful adoption, what cybersecurity risk professionals and CIOs are trying to do is make sure that they get their arms around sort of the entirety of their AI estate and they want to understand what are the right practices, the right tools. We're all learning this together. We're in the middle of a revolution. And you know, we're very, very proud of Haiku to be helping to build a safer world with the Haiku Air platform.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Fantastic. Well, congratulations again on all the success, important work, and uh onwards and upwards. Thanks, Simon. Thanks, Evan. Great to be here. Take care. And thanks everyone for listening, watching, and uh, we'll be in touch again soon. Take care.