Belgium-based xyzt.ai was founded to help customers gain insight from their location data. Read on to hear why the company chose Clumio, a Commvault company following its acquisition in 2024, to reduce AWS backup costs and significantly improve recovery times.
Q: Lida, can you start by telling us what xyzt.ai does?
Lida: We are a cloud-based, no-code analytics platform that helps customers turn massive volumes of sensor, IoT, and mobility data into meaningful insights. We process billions of records and make it easy for users to visualize patterns, identify anomalies, and make data-driven decisions. Our customers span maritime, mobility, smart cities, and connectivity – anyone who needs to understand location-based behavior at scale.
Q: As a growing startup, how did backups fit into your early strategy?
Lida: In the beginning, AWS-native backups worked well for us. They were simple, integrated, and aligned with our cloud-first architecture. Unfortunately, over time, as our data grew, our AWS backup bill grew with it. It wasn’t dramatic at first, but every year the cost kept climbing.
Q: At what point did rising AWS backup costs become something you needed to solve?
Lida: After about five years of steady growth, the trend was impossible to ignore. Our costs were increasing year over year simply because we were scaling our data footprint. That’s when we realized we needed a more sustainable, predictable option.
Q: What led you to evaluate Clumio?
Lida: Initially, we were looking purely for cost reduction. Once we saw the Clumio demo, we realized the value was much broader. Compliance, recovery, data isolation, pricing predictability – those were all important features Clumio provided.
Q: How would you describe your onboarding experience?
Lida: Surprisingly fast. We expected a time-consuming migration, but it was incredibly smooth. We had our first backup running within 30 minutes. That’s not something you expect when switching a core infrastructure component.
Q: Many organizations worry not just about backup costs but also how quickly they can recover. How has recovery performance changed since moving to Clumio?
Lida: Recovery speed is one of the areas where we saw the biggest improvement. With AWS-native tools, restoring large datasets could take hours – sometimes longer – because recoveries were tied to the time it took to fully rehydrate data back into our AWS environment. That lag was a real challenge when we needed fast access for troubleshooting or when customers required immediate data validation.
With Clumio, the experience is dramatically different. The Instant Access feature lets us mount backups in minutes without waiting for full restores. That means our team can start working with the data almost immediately, whether it’s for verification, investigation, or full-scale recovery.
The time savings are enormous – it’s not just faster, it fundamentally changes how quickly we can respond to issues. For a real-time analytics platform like ours, that makes Clumio far more effective than AWS-native options.
Q: Let’s talk results. What impact did Clumio have once you were up and running?
Lida: The most immediate impact with Clumio was cost savings. Using AWS Storage Lens, we confirmed that backups through Clumio were 66.7% cheaper than what we were paying previously. That validation came quickly, and it accelerated our internal approval to move forward.
We also gained stronger resilience by storing backups outside our main AWS environment, which improved our security and compliance posture.
Q: What advice would you share with other AWS-native startups evaluating their backup strategy, and how does Clumio fit into your long-term plans?
Lida: I would tell other startups not to be intimidated by the idea of switching backup providers. The migration was much easier than we expected, and the payoff was immediate.
If your AWS costs are climbing or your compliance requirements are evolving, it’s absolutely worth exploring alternatives. Data protection is central to our business, so we need solutions that scale with us without introducing unpredictable cost spikes – and Clumio gives us that confidence.
Cara Peterson is Voice of the Customer Manager at Commvault.
