E189: Why Your Backup Platform Should Be Open Source with Plakar

E189: Why Your Backup Platform Should Be Open Source with Plakar

From Open Source Startup Podcast by Robby (MTF); Tim (Essence VC)

January 15, 2026 · 40 min

About this episode

The episode discusses the importance of open source backup solutions, featuring an interview with Plakar's co-founder Julien Mangeard.

In our latest episode, co-hosts Robby and Tim talk with Julien Mangeard , Co-Founder of open source backup platform Plakar . Plakar's open source, also called plakar , has 1.5K stars on GitHub and provides a backup solution powered by open source, immutable data store Kloset. The podcast discusses why data backup remains a critical but unsolved problem, especially as the number of data sources has exploded across SaaS applications, cloud databases, and on-prem systems. For CISOs and CTOs, this complexity makes it increasingly difficult to ensure everything is done “the right way.” The core argument is that the only truly safe approach is maintaining an independent, secure copy of your data - without vendor lock-in and with guaranteed long-term access, sometimes for decades. End-to-end encryption, immutable storage, and compatibility with different storage backends are emphasized as essential foundations rather than optional features. The conversation contrasts hype-driven cloud-only backup companies like Eon with Plakar’s back-to-basics approach: an open source, resilience-focused system designed to handle large and diverse datasets securely. Built around an immutable storage…

People in this episode

Hosts: Robby, Tim

Guest: Julien Mangeard

Topics covered

  • open source
  • data backup
  • immutable storage
  • security
  • cloud databases
  • vendor lock-in

Keywords

  • backup platform
  • open source
  • data security
  • immutable data
  • cloud applications
  • data management

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Plakar, Kloset, Eon, SaaS, CTO, CISO

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