In this episode of Across The Tech Pond, hosts David Marshall (VMblog.com), Antony Savvas (IT Europa), and Neil Hughes (Tech Talks Daily) sit down with Simon Taylor, CEO and Founder of HYCU, to discuss the rapidly evolving landscape of SaaS data protection, cloud backup solutions, and the critical importance of data resilience in 2025.

What You’ll Learn:

HYCU (Hybrid Cloud Uptime) has established itself as a leader in cloud data management and protection, serving 4,600 customers across 78 countries with an impressive 91 NPS score. In this in-depth conversation, Simon reveals how HYCU is tackling one of the industry’s most overlooked challenges: the fact that most SaaS applications don’t automatically back up your data.

Key Topics Covered:

The SaaS Protection Gap: With 30,000 SaaS services available in the United States alone and the average company using 212 of them, Simon explains why only five SaaS services had enterprise-grade backup protection when HYCU started addressing this critical vulnerability.

HYCU R-Cloud Innovation: Learn about HYCU’s groundbreaking low-code development platform that enables SaaS vendors to build their own data protection integrations, democratizing enterprise-grade backup across the ecosystem. The platform now supports 92 integrations-12 times more than any competitor.

Dell Technologies Partnership: Simon discusses HYCU’s strategic partnership with Dell, making HYCU the only data protection vendor on Dell’s Extended Technologies price book that supports on-premises, public cloud, and SaaS environments. The integration with Dell Data Domain brings deduplication capabilities to modern cloud and SaaS workloads.

Regulatory Compliance: Deep dive into how regulations like DORA (for financial services) and NIS 2 (for critical infrastructure) are driving demand for local data copies and comprehensive backup strategies.

AI and Data Protection: Simon shares HYCU’s approach to artificial intelligence, including their partnership with Anthropic to enhance their development platform, and teases a significant AI-related announcement coming in January 2026.

Insider Threats and Security: Critical insights on why insider threats represent the number one challenge for CISOs and how data protection, cybersecurity, and AI converge to address this issue.

Real-World Use Cases: From protecting a navy fleet’s data at sea to supporting major sports teams and healthcare organizations, hear how HYCU’s simplicity and comprehensive coverage solve complex data protection challenges across industries.

Simon emphasizes three critical takeaways for IT leaders: focus on insider threat detection, ensure comprehensive SaaS backup coverage (as 50% of ransomware attacks now target SaaS), and recognize that CISOs are increasingly being held personally liable for data protection failures.

With projections of 150-200 total integrations by the end of 2026 and continued expansion into sectors like HR, healthcare, and legal services, HYCU is positioned at the forefront of the data protection evolution.

About the Hosts:

David Marshall – Owner and operator of VMblog.com, based in Austin, Texas

Antony Savvas – Contributor to IT Europa, IoT Now, and TechLed

Neil Hughes – Host of Tech Talks Daily and writer for Cyber News

About HYCU:

HYCU provides hybrid cloud data protection solutions across on-premises, public cloud, and SaaS environments. Learn more at hycu.com

Stay tuned for HYCU’s major announcement in January 2026, which promises to bring significant new capabilities to their R-Cloud platform.