In the enterprise data management market, proof-of-concept engagements are a critical step in the buying journey. For Cohesity — whose platform spans data backup, ransomware recovery, and multicloud data management — sophisticated buyers expect to see the product working in an environment that mirrors their own. A delayed or broken POC doesn't just slow a deal; it can end it.

Cohesity's pre-sales team had built deep technical expertise in the product, but the infrastructure supporting their POC work hadn't kept pace. Each new POC environment was built manually, drawing on a pool of on-premises hardware that was perpetually oversubscribed. When multiple enterprise deals required simultaneous POCs, the team had to prioritize — meaning some prospects waited days for an environment to become available.

Configuration drift was the other persistent problem. When SEs built environments by hand, small variations accumulated over time. A prospect who had seen a demo in one environment would encounter a subtly different experience in their POC — creating confusion and, in some cases, loss of confidence in the product.

Cohesity's pre-sales operations leadership evaluated TechAccelerator against a DIY cloud automation approach and a competitor platform. The decision came down to three factors:

• Template-based environment management: TechAccelerator allowed Cohesity's SE team to create versioned, reusable environment templates for each product use case. A new POC for Cohesity DataProtect would provision identically every time — no manual steps, no drift.
• Zero infrastructure management: The fully managed model meant Cohesity's SEs never had to think about the underlying cloud infrastructure. TechAccelerator's team handled provisioning, networking, security, and monitoring.
• Flat-rate pricing: With unlimited lab usage at a predictable monthly cost, Cohesity could scale POC volume without budget surprises. Running 30 POCs in a quarter cost the same as running 10.

Salesforce integration was a key differentiator. When an SE advanced an opportunity to the POC stage in Salesforce, TechAccelerator could automatically trigger environment provisioning — reducing coordination overhead to near zero.

TechAccelerator worked with Cohesity's SE leadership to identify the five most commonly requested POC configurations: DataProtect backup and recovery, ransomware simulation, multicloud archive, Cohesity Marketplace integrations, and a "full platform" environment for strategic deals.

These were built out as reusable templates in TechAccelerator's environment library and validated by Cohesity's senior SEs. Once approved, any SE on the team could self-provision any configuration in under 30 minutes — with no involvement from infrastructure or DevOps teams.

The Salesforce integration went live in week three. By the end of the first full quarter on the platform, Cohesity had delivered more POCs than in any previous six-month period.

With the POC workflow fully established, Cohesity is using TechAccelerator's Lab-as-a-Service platform for a second use case: customer-facing training labs for DataHawk threat intelligence and DataProtect compliance features — two areas where hands-on experience is critical to buyer confidence and post-sale adoption.

The same template model applies: standard training lab configurations provisioned on demand, accessible to customers via a branded Cohesity portal, with no SE involvement after initial setup.