David West has served as our Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing and Business Development since April 2011. Prior to his current role, he served as Vice President of Marketing and Business Development from September 2005 to March 2011, and as our vice president of business development from August 2000 to September 2005.

Prior to joining our company, Mr. West served as a director of strategic alliances from April 1999 to July 2000 and vice president of storage solutions in July 2000 at Legato Systems, Inc., which was subsequently acquired by EMC Corporation.

Prior to joining Legato Systems, Mr. West served as vice president of sales at Intelliguard Software, Inc., which was also subsequently acquired by EMC Corporation, from 1990 to April 1999.

Mr. West obtained his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Villanova University.

Shout Out to Sys Admins! Have a coffee on us!

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

July 31st is the 10th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day, so it's time to thank that special someone who's on the frontlines every day ensuring your mission-critical data is safe and sound. The day, which is recognized by the League of Professional System Administrators, gives all of us an opportunity to show our appreciation for the stellar contributions of sys admins and other IT professionals. These unsung heroes repeatedly give up weekends, nights and holidays to salvage accidentally deleted files, fix broken backups, restore wayward emails and manage the nonstop flood of important information that drives our businesses.

While it's not recognized yet by Hallmark, this special day already has its own song, written by Wes Borg, a grateful recipient of sys admin know-how. Popular online merchant Café Press is commemorating the day with lots of great mugs, funny t-shirts and other unique gift ideas while ThinkGeek has been running a special pageant to honor the most deserving "SysKing" or "SysQueen" with $500 in gift certificates.

I'd also like to give a shout out to all of the sys admins who tirelessly keep the email server up, critical data intact and the compliance department happy. It's a daunting task, but these hardworking techies always seem on their game when challenged. We've all heard the horror stores and feel their pain. No one wants to spend countless hours finding the CEO's lost emails, writing manual scripts to backup crucial corporate databases or managing a hodgepodge of products that don't talk to each other or work well together.

At CommVault, we have a philosophy of paying attention to what sys admins want and need as their in-the-trenches input has proven invaluable in helping us make better products. In fact, our latest software release, Simpana 8, contains more than 300 customer-requested enhancements mostly from sys admins which we hope makes their jobs easier. We truly value the opinions of sys admins, especially since they're the ones deploying Simpana software and recommending it to others. They also can pack a lot of useful information into 140 characters, which I've learned from following some recent Twitter comments.

I salute all of you awesome sys admins! Thanks for all you do as businesses wouldn't run the same without you if they ran at all. And, if CommVault gave back to you one night or weekend that otherwise would have been spent at the office, we hope we've eased your load in some small way.

As a token of my appreciation, I'd like to buy a cup of coffee for each sys admin out there who supports CommVault environments, because you help us in a big way. If you are a sys admin at a CommVault customer site, please complete the comment form at the bottom of this post with your name, e-mail address, your company name and mailing address. Upon verification that you are a CommVault customer, I will mail you a $5 Starbucks Card* (while supplies last) so you can get your cup o' Joe along with my sincere gratitude. Any comments received that contain your contact information will not be published.

Enjoy your special day on July 31st –perhaps even knock off a little early for some well-deserved fun. What else would make the day extra special or simplify your job? We want to hear about it, so keep the ideas and suggestions coming, and please know how much we truly appreciate your hard work.

Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day!

* Starbucks, the Starbucks logo and the Starbucks Card design are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Starbucks U.S. Brands, LLC. Starbucks is not a participating partner or sponsor in this offer.

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