IBM Launches Hybrid Cloud Backup Product With Cobalt Iron

March 9, 2026 Alex Woodie

IBM and its business partner Cobalt Iron last week announced the launch of a new cloud backup product. Dubbed Secure Automated Backup with Compass for IBM Cloud, the new SaaS offering can protect data residing across customers’ landscape, including IBM Cloud, other clouds, and on-prem systems like IBM i.

Cobalt Iron was founded in 2013 with the goal of modernizing backup and recovery. Founder Richard Spurlock saw that companies were spending too much time with platform-specific backup products, so he decided to build a centralized virtual tape library (VTL) solution that could back up and recover data across a range …