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Blogs - Around the Web
Please find below highlights of, and links to blogging websites that have commented on CommVault and its products. The opinions expressed here are those of the authors, and do not represent the thoughts, opinions, plans or strategies of CommVault Systems, Inc. ("CommVault") and CommVault undertakes no obligation to update, correct or modify any statements made by the author of this blog. Any and all third party links provided by this blog are not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, CommVault. If you click on a link and it appears to be no longer valid, please let the webmaster know.
CommVault 2013 Predictions: Business IT Forecast - Partly to Mostly Cloudy with an Increasing Chance of Managed Service Providers
VMblog
by Phil Curran
November 30, 2012
Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2013. Read them in this VMblog.com series exclusive.
Business IT Forecast - Partly to Mostly Cloudy with an Increasing Chance of Managed Service Providers
In case you missed the memo, businesses are becoming increasingly reliant on support from service providers. Gone are the days when IT maintenance, updates and upgrades were based on a yearly, quarterly or even monthly schedule, and your data lived in a storage center that was located in an industrial park across town. Instead, IT maintenance today is based on need, which is now, and data is being moved to the cloud, which many are now considering a safer alternative for when the next 500 square mile super storm hits.
Worry-free data protection with PowerVault DL2300, powered by CommVault
Dell - Inside Enterprise IT
by Andrea Vaziri
November 15, 2012
Traveling internationally can be challenging at times. My sister recently went on vacation to SE Asia with a small tour group and found the leader of the tour group to be disorganized and not very knowledgeable on many of the areas they visited. She ended up cutting her vacation short because of the chaos of the trip. On the other hand, last year my parents went to China on a Chamber-of-Commerce-sponsored tour, and their vacation was extremely informative, well-organized, and everything went perfectly according to plan. They claimed it was one of the best vacations of their lives!
CommVault CEO: Private Equity is About Growth
Private Equity At Work
by Staff Writer
October 12, 2012
In a blog post for Forbes, President and CEO of CommVault, N. Robert Hammer, replies to critics who criticize private equity for political gain. Having run companies funded by private equity, Hammer provides insights into how private equity firms take broken companies and turn them around. In 1998, CommVault, the company Hammer now runs, was in terrible shape and in need of a boost. Private equity invested in the company because investors saw an opportunity to transform the business into a profitable enterprise.
Microsoft and CommVault Target Azure for Backup, Archiving
Redmond Magazine
by Jeffrey Schwartz
April 23, 2012
Looking to incent enterprises to use its Windows Azure cloud service to backup and archive their data, Microsoft today launched a discounted plan that lets customers store up to 41 TB of data for one year for $50,000.
At 8.5 cents per GB, that's a healthy discount over the current per-GB rate of about 12.5 cents, said Karl Dittman, a Microsoft business development director. "Normally a customer would have to purchase a petabyte of storage in order to get this pricing model we are providing for approximately 50 TB," Dittman said. That's not the upper limit; pricing will scale for larger amounts of storage.
Microsoft is offering the service with longtime partner CommVault, whose Simpana 9 Express software will allow IT pros to manage their backups and archives. The 41 TB limit covers standard Windows Azure storage. For those using non-geo replicated storage, the limit is 62 TB.
Microsoft and CommVault Target Azure for Backup, Archiving
Redmond Channel Partner
by Jeffrey Schwartz
April 23, 2012
Looking to incent enterprises to use its Windows Azure cloud service to backup and archive their data, Microsoft today launched a discounted plan that lets customers store up to 41 TB of data for one year for $50,000.
At 8.5 cents per GB, that's a healthy discount over the current per-GB rate of about 12.5 cents, said Karl Dittman, a Microsoft business development director. "Normally a customer would have to purchase a petabyte of storage in order to get this pricing model we are providing for approximately 50 TB," Dittman said. That's not the upper limit; pricing will scale for larger amounts of storage.
Microsoft is offering the service with longtime partner CommVault, whose Simpana 9 Express software will allow IT pros to manage their backups and archives. The 41 TB limit covers standard Windows Azure storage. For those using non-geo replicated storage, the limit is 62 TB.
CommVault Stays Stag as HP, Others Build Storage Strategy
Silicon Angle
by Maria Deutscher
February 8, 2012
Enterprise storage software maker CommVault won't follow the same track its competitors did, and will continue to run solo for the time being, according to a statement by Bob Hammer, the chief executive, chairman and president of the company.
"Whatever happens on the M&A side, our mission is clear — create shareholder value on our own as an independent company," Hammer said.
CommVault's head is keen on generating that value, and said he plans on boosting his company's annual sales to $1 billion within five years, a formidable distance from today's $400 million. Those plans may include additional partnerships with the large enterprises that may be interested in more extensive access to CommVault's IP.
"Michael Turits, a technology analyst at Raymond James, said that for a large technology company, CommVault would make a "great acquisition."
Turits said CommVault would be able to better compete within a larger organization with the likes of Symantec, EMC and IBM, which have far more resources.
Isilon, 3PAR and Compellent were the software maker's prime competitors in the storage space, up until they were acquired by the titans of this industry: EMC, HP and Dell. So far these investments have proved rather fruitful in all three cases.
EMC, for one, recently integrated a part of the Isilon portfolio into its big data strategy, which is no longer dependant on MapR's third party software. The company introduced an appliance that features a new Hadoop distribution developed internally by EMC running on Isilon hardware.
In a different area of the storage industry, Permabit has already started with its own plan to make partnerships in order to facilitate growth. The company offers an OEM-embedded dedupe solution named Albireo, and StoneFly is the newest reseller.
No More Excuses for Not Having Disaster Recovery in the Cloud
IT Business Edge
by Arthur Cole
December 8, 2011
Disaster recovery in cloud environments is emerging as one of the must-have tools now that enterprises are looking for more than just massively scalable data repositories.
As more applications and development environments make their way to both internal and external cloud architectures, the cloud becomes not just a convenience but a strategic asset that is just as vital, and just as vulnerable to disruption, as existing physical and virtual infrastructure.
CommVault considers backup on the edge the next frontier
SearchStorage
by Dave Raffo
November 7, 2011
Among the sales last quarter that helped CommVault surpass its revenue expectations was a large organization that became the first production customer for CommVault's mobile backup technology.
CommVault launched its Simpana Edge Protection in April, but CommVault CEO Bob Hammer said the release was limited to one large customer that implemented it on 20,000 devices. He predicts this is the beginning of big things to come from the remote backup market.
IT-Lifeline releases cloud-based recovery service for Amazon Web Services
The Spokesman-Review
by Tom
October 7, 2011
Liberty Lake's IT-Lifeline has announced it's become the first company to offer a cloud-based disaster recovery option over Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS is Amazon's rentable online cloud service that gives companies computing capacity on an as-needed basis.
IT-Lifeline will license software from CommVault that is designed for quick and reliable data restoration. CommVault's chief recovery product is the Simpana suite of services.
My CommVault Experience: A Preview of My CommVault VMworld Booth Presentation
PaulSlager.com
by Paul Slager
August 26, 2011
Earlier this month I blogged about a few of the VMworld 2011 parties and events I was looking forward to and recommending to fellow attendees at this year’s conference. I know at some point we all wish we could clone ourselves in order to make every single one of these events because for many of us, VMworld is the one time during the year when we get to see fellow IT professionals face-to-face and all together in one place.
While I can’t say which sessions or events I’ll manage to attend, one thing I can say for certain is that on Monday, August 29 at 6 p.m., I will be at the CommVault booth (#801) to deliver a special presentation about LWG Consulting and our experience with CommVault. I’ll be there to talk about challenges, celebrate our accomplishments, and exchange anecdotes and best practices with fellow IT professionals at the conference.
Oracle, Due Out Thu., Can't Crack IBD 50's Top 5 Software Firms
Investor's Business Daily Technology Blog
by Ed Carson
June 18, 2011
Software giant Oracle (ORCL) reports on Thursday, giving investors the latest look into business IT spending trends. Tibco Software (TIBX) also releases results that day. Both are highly rated, but neither cracks the elite IBD 50 list. But several other software makers have. The top five include Informatica (INFA), Open Text (OTEX), VMware (VMW), Check Point Software Technologies (CHKP) and CommVault Systems (CVLT).
Netapp snaps onto Simpana
Image and Data Manager
by Staff Writer
June 1, 2011
NetApp has has turned to CommVault to power a new offering, SnapProtect management software, that will carry out backup to disk and replication to tape.
CommVault's Simpana software provides a core component of the new NetApp SnapProtect offering. which eliminates the need to manage snapshot operations and backup in parallel.
NetApp and CommVault Unite to Modernize Backup
Enterprise Strategy Group
by Lauren Whitehouse
May 31, 2011
If NetApp hasn't convinced you that its snapshot- and replication-based data protection portfolio qualifies as backup, the company has assembled an alternative. NetApp is partnering with CommVault, OEMing CommVault Simpana v9 software and branding it as SnapProtect, to deliver a comprehensive backup and recovery solution.
Why make this move? For starters, organizations need better backup approaches given unyielding data growth and the challenges of meeting tight backup windows and making rapid recoveries. Snapshot copies are simply faster than filesystem-based ones. NetApp also sees opportunity in the estimated $4B backup and recovery software market. The company realizes that tape media is still relevant and essential, and that IT organizations feel comfortable with a backup catalog and search capabilities—two things NetApp doesn't deliver in its NetApp-specific Integrated Data Protection portfolio—that it gains with a CommVault partnership.
Best of TechEd Finalist: CommVault Simpana 9 Leaps Forward
Windows IT Pro
by Jason Bovberg
May 25, 2011
I spoke with Randy De Meno (chief technologist) and David Ngo (director of engineering alliances) of CommVault at TechEd about the latest version of his company’s Simpana data protection software, which introduces a host of evolutionary features revolving around de-duplication, snapshot functionality, and virtualization. Simpana was a Best of TechEd finalist last year with version 8, but it was version 9's bevy of enhancements that brought CommVault to the winner's circle this year.
Simpana 9 now lets you de-duplicate data at the source, so that you can significantly speed up your backup times, reduce the amount of data traveling over your networks, and lessen the amount of data that you're storing. CommVault actually gives you the ability to perform end-to-end de-duplication across all storage tiers (source, secondary, archive, cloud)—a capability that De Meno refers to as “Universal Dedupe.”
The future of backup and recovery
Forrester Research @ ZDNet
by Rachel Dines
May 16, 2011
I've got backup on the brain. I guess this isn't an unusual occurrence for me, but it's also been bolstered by a week at Symantec Vision, a week at EMC World, as well as backup announcements about IBM's data protection hardware and CommVault's PC backup enhancements not to mention the flurry of cloud backup news this week from Trend Micro, CA Technologies, and Carbonite. All of this has gotten me thinking about the future of backup... we've come a long way from simple agent-based backup and recovery. Backup is just one piece in an ever-increasingly complicated puzzle we call continuity. If backup software vendors want to stay relevant they're going to need to offer a lot more than just backup in their "data protection" suites.
CommVault FY Q4 Revenues, EPS Top Street Estimatess
The Tech Trade @ Forbes.com
by Eric Savitz
May 10, 2011
CommVault this morning posted better-than-expected results for its fiscal fourth quarter ended March 31.
For the quarter, the enterprise storage software company posted revenue of $89.6 million and non-GAAP profits of 25 cents a share, ahead of the Street consensus at $84.4 million and 23 cents. Revenue was up 22% from a year ago.
Improper data management is a whisky business
Domain Technologies Blog
by Staff Writer
April 7, 2011
Computer Weekly article, Chivas Brothers use CommVault data deduplication to maximise disc back-up, reports that Chivas Brothers had a major issue with data volumes and, consequently, backups were taking a long time. Storage had reached 90 Tbytes, which was spread across applications including an Oracle-based ERP system and MS Exchange. Clearly: Houston we have a problem.
Chivas surveyed the market and decided to implement the Simpana solution from Domain Technologies’ partner, CommVault. The results, documented in this case study, were impressive.
Commvault Turns Snapshots Into 'Proper' Backups
Network Computing
by Howard Marks
March 21, 2011
As we discussed a few weeks ago, you can certainly argue that snapshots, when combined with replication, could serve as an adequate backup system. My biggest objection was that snapshots lack the catalog that conventional backup applications build as they back up data. Commvault's SnapProtect fills that gap by providing catalogs and a management console for snapshots across a variety of arrays and other snapshot providers.
SnapProtect integrates Commvault's Simpana backup with the snapshot capabilities of most midrange and enterprise disk arrays or even CommVault's own software provider. With SnapProtect, you can schedule snapshots through the Simpana backup console.
When your backup schedule calls for a snapshot, Simpana calls the Commvault VSS provider, for Windows servers, and the snapshot API for your disk array to create an application consistent snapshot. Application consistent snaps are also supported for Oracle and on several Linux distributions and Unix flavors with the usual scripting.
CommVault Helps Healthcare Organizations Heal Silo-Based Data and Information Management Pains
VMBlog
by David Marshall
March 15, 2011
For healthcare providers looking to manage their critical infrastructure and ensure vital patient information is both protected and accessible across clinical, operational, virtual and imaging environments, CommVault delivers a set of capabilities built into the recently-released Simpana 9 software that address key healthcare market needs.
In response to recent standards set by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, many hospitals and healthcare organizations are implementing information systems to meet new requirements in support of HIPAA and electronic medical records/electronic health records (EMR/ EHRs) adoption.
The rapid growth in these information systems combined with increased complexity of healthcare delivery and financing present challenges for IT infrastructures as organizations strive to collect, analyze and manage critical information currently distributed among multiple endpoint (workstations, servers, databases, mobile devices) silos.
CommVault CEO: Industry has shifted to snap-based backups
Storage Soup (A SearchStorage.com Blog)
by Dave Raffo
February 2, 2011
CommVault CEO Bob Hammer pointed to his company's strong sales results last quarter as a validation of Simpana 9 released in October and a change in the way organizations approach backup today.
CommVault Tuesday reported revenue of $84 million last quarter, up 18% from last year and 11.2% from the previous quarter. The results were a big jump from two quarters ago when CommVault slumped to $66.3 million in revenue when it missed its projections by a wide margin. CommVault also seems to have gained on market leader Symantec, which last week reported its backup and archiving revenue increased five percent over last year.
While Simpana 9 drew a lot of attention for adding source deduplication to the target dedupe in the previous version, it also leans heavily on replication and snapshot technology to create recovery copies of data without moving the data. These technologies were cited by Gartner in its most recent Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Disk-Based Backup/Recovery that placed CommVault at the head of the leaders group.
CommVault reports solid second quarter
Dave Simpson's Storage Blog
by Dave Simpson
November 5, 2010
With virtually all storage vendors racking up impressive revenue numbers over the last couple quarters, it's no surprise that CommVault turned in solid performance figures for its fiscal second quarter today. In fact, the company achieved record revenue of $75.2 million, an increase of 13% over the same period a year ago, and also up 13% over the previous quarter. Breaking those numbers down a bit, software revenue was $35.8 million, up 7% year-over-year and 26% sequentially. Services revenue was $39.5 million, up 19% year-over-year and 13% over the prior quarter. Income from operations was $9.2 million. That compares to $6.5 million in the same quarter last year.
CommVault executives highlighted a number of recent parternships that could fuel growth, including a distribution agreement with Hitachi Ltd. subsidiary Hitachi Computer Peripherals, as well as a partnership with Mezeo Software that will integrate CommVault's Simpana software with the Mezeo Cloud Storage Platform.
But the big highlight in the quarter was CommVault's launch of the long-anticipated Simpana 9 software, which included significant enhancements for data protection in virtual server environments, as well as source-based (in addition to target-based) deduplication and integrated array-based snapshots (see "CommVault unveils Simpana 9").
CommVault and Hitachi Distribute Simpana In Japan
The VAR Guy
by Dave Courbanou
October 7, 2010
CommVault, the company known for their data management Simpana Software, has inked a deal with Hitachi Computer Peripherals to distribute said software into Japan. Read on for the brisk brief...
CommVault's angle for this new partnership with Hitchai (Hitachi Computer Peripherals, which is a subsidiary of Hitachi), is to push Simpana software adoption into "key" Asia-Pacific markets, specifically those with enterprise businesses.
But why Hitachi? As you might have guessed based on your hard drives, Hitachi has a good chunk of storage market share, and has positive satisfaction ratings from their partners. CommVault sees them in a good position to propel Simpana into the market.
CommVault cites an IDC figure that shows Japanese companies are looking to build more robust and prioritized storage management solutions into their networks.
CommVault Simpana 9 Takes Backup To A New Level
Pack Rat Blog
by Stephen Foskett
October 5, 2010
CommVault is one of those enterprise IT companies that likes to go their own way. A spin-out of AT&T's famed Bell Labs, CommVault's Simpana software integrates many aspects of data management, from backup to e-discovery, under one umbrella. Last year, the company impressed me by adding cloud storage as a backup target equal in status to disk and traditional tape. Now the company is doing the same for storage-based snapshots, accelerating data protection for virtual machines.
Nearly every aspect of CommVault's Simpana 9 is refreshed, though development and unveiling has been an ongoing process throughout the year. Following Simpana 8 by two years, the new software integrates work done integrating cloud storage and virtual machine backup over the last year or so. The "data management" portion of the product (including backup, archiving, and replication) was detailed this week, and one expects more information about the other half ("information management") to be forthcoming.
Simpana 9 is available as of October 5 from OEMs, resellers, also direct from CommVault. Pricing is simplified this time around with CommVault using a capacity licensing model. Cost is based on the largest backup or archiving job, though the old licensing model still still available. A "circuit breaker reset" allows the system to go over the licensed level temporarily in a pinch.
CommVault Continues Aggressive Posture with Simpana 9
Enterprise Strategy Group
by Lauren Whitehouse
October 5, 2010
CommVault, once again, is ready for a rumble. The company has aggressively pursued market share leaders in the backup space for the past few years with impressive enhancements to its flagship product. Armed with its Simpana 9 product, a new licensing model and a quick migration to enable a switch from Symantec NetBackup or IBM TSM, CommVault is intent on moving up the leaderboard.
The big themes for this launch are: backup modernization, leveraging public cloud storage for long-term retention of data, deduplication flexibility, and improving server virtualization data protection. These are all "now" and "next" considerations for IT buyers in their segment–and things that ESG research respondents rank highly on their spending intentions list. What I find most exciting is not CommVault's responsiveness to market demands, but rather the "wow" factor in their delivery of these enhancements.
So, what's the wow in Simpana 9? When it comes to modernizing backup, they're not just focused on supporting the "back-end" of the backup data flow and integrating with disk to improve performance and reliability. They're also highly focused on the "front-end" capture techniques to create efficiencies and accelerate backup. The company has been consistent with not only taking the lead, but also providing depth to its functionality. This is evident because CommVault is not content to just introduce support for array-based snapshots. They've introduced their SnapProtect feature for many of the top array vendors in the market, including Dell, EMC, HDS, HP, IBM, LSI, and NetApp. Policies for scheduling and triggering snapshots is accomplished via the Simpana interface, application- and file-level consistency is maintained, and snapshot data is indexed and catalogued by Simpana to facilitate rapid recovery processes.
Dell, CommVault Add Cloud Power To Backup Appliance
InformationWeek SMB
by Daniel Dern
September 16, 2010
The new Dell PowerVault DL Backup to Disk Appliance sets up in thirty minutes, can replace old disk-to-tape backups with disk-to-disk, as well as disk-to-cloud for archiving and disaster recovery.
To simplify doing backups both locally and online, and doing online backups to cloud providers, Dell and CommVault have announced the new Dell PowerVault DL Backup to Disk Appliance, which uses Simpana 8 software from CommVault.
The new DL Appliance can provide backup and restore for data ranging from individual files, to entire system states for full system recovery, according to Michael McMahon, VP of Business Development, WorldWide OEM, CommVault. Backup capabilities include disk-based backup, deduplication, archiving, integrated data management, and cloud support. The combination of features means that companies can hang on to data longer and more cost-effectively, according to CommVault.
CommVault And Mezeo Partner For A Simpler Cloud
The VAR Guy
by Dave Courbanou
September 14, 2010
CommVault is branching out with their latest partnership with Mezeo, which provides a service-enabled cloud storage platform. Here’s where the two companies are heading, and the potential implications for partners.
CommVault has integrated their Simpana Software with Mezeo’s Cloud platform. The result is a faster simpler ability to deploy cloud services. The partnership comes at no surprise, especially after Matt Weinberger detailed Mezeo’s Storage Ready Enablement Program. Mezeo prides itself on their scalable, easy to deploy and API-friendly platform.
All that being said, CommVault’s cloud-optimized Simpana has been designed to “integrate seamlessly” with Mezeo’s Cloud Storage Platform. The goal is to provide IT service providers with branded cloud storage solutions for everything from disaster recovery to business continuity and of course, compliance.
CommVault Unveils 'Cloud DR' Offering Hosted at Rackspace
Storage Technology Solutions Review
by Lawrence E. Wilson
September 14, 2010
CommVault is introducing "Cloud DR," a mid-market disaster recovery offering that enables customers to realize higher levels of business continuity without the large capital investments typically required by traditional, off-premises disaster recovery solutions. CommVault will provide small and medium-sized businesses with an affordable, flexible disaster recovery solution that leverages the seamless integration between CommVault's enterprise cloud computing-optimized Simpana® software and RackspaceCloud Hosting services. With CommVault's integrated cloud storage connector for Simpana software, joint customers can use CommVault's single console to move on-premise backup and archive data securely and reliably to Rackspace Cloud Files™, which provides online storage for files and media. The result gives customers the opportunity to reduce internal IT costs by moving infrequently accessed files and email data off expensive, tier-one storage to lower-cost cloud storage.
CommVault Adds Cloud DR, Partners With Dell For PowerVault DL
The VAR Guy
by Dave Courbanou
September 13, 2010
CommVault is leveraging relationships with RackSpace and Dell to push deeper into the SMB cloud storage market. Specifically, CommVault is launching a Cloud DR service offering (hosted at Rackspace) for the SMB market, and also partnering up with Dell on a storage move. Both efforts are geared towards data and backup recovery. Here are the details.
First up, the Cloud DR Service. It works like this:
Aimed at the mid-market for disaster recovery services, CommVault ties together Rackspace’s Cloud Hosting Services with their Simpana software, which is designed specifically for integration and ease of use to move data over to the Rackspace cloud, Commvault says.
CommVault says the service allows partners to deliver a hosted off-premise solution without on-premise infrastructure investment. Also, CommVault Simpana software users can leverage Rackspace’s cloud-based data storage by buying a per-terabyte license from CommVault, to store data on-premises or in the cloud. CommVault customers can also purchase Cloud Files storage for about 15 cents per GB a month.
Virtualization -- The Future of Corporate IT
Big Fat Finance Blog
by Alan Radding
September 8, 2010
If you had any doubts that virtualization was the future of corporate IT, the VMworld 2010 conference held in San Francisco 2 weeks ago should lay those to rest. The conference, an annual gathering of VMware users, attracted more than 17,000 customers, partners, press, and analysts, and 233 sponsors and exhibitors. This went beyond the usual virtualization for business discussion. The focus moved to virtualization in the cloud.
Although there are other virtualization players, mainly Microsoft, VMware clearly has emerged as the virtualization leader in the x86 (PC server) world. CommVault, a storage provider, released the results of its survey of more than 10,000 customers and found that 83 percent identified VMware as their virtualization platform.
For the CFO, the question is not whether the organization should adopt virtualization, but how extensively it should virtualize and how fast. For starters, using virtualization to consolidate the proliferation of x86 servers is a no-brainer for the increased server utilization alone. Check out the CommVault server results here.
CommVault Releases Results of End-User Virtualization Survey Reinforcing Need for Automated, Scalable & Modern Data Management to Streamline Rapid Adoption of Virtualization
VMBlog
by David Marshall
August 31, 2010
CommVault has released the results of its Virtualization Survey, which polled Simpana software customers worldwide to determine the key factors driving adoption of server virtualization and the major challenges associated with managing these environments.
A total of 479 respondents underscored the continued rise in server virtualization, with 46 percent of those polled citing that between 51- and 85-percent of their total servers were virtualized while 21 percent reported successful virtualization of all or nearly all servers. VMware was listed as the virtualization platform of choice by 83 percent of those polled.
The survey revealed that the top three factors driving server virtualization decisions among the respondents are: the need for improved business cost savings and efficiencies, customer responsiveness and improved service levels. The opportunity to leverage virtualization as an alternative disaster recovery strategy was also cited.
Survey: VMware Remains Dominant Virtualization Platform
The Var Guy
by Staff Writer
August 31, 2010
At a time when VMware faces intense competition from Citrix, Microsoft, Oracle, Red Hat and other aspiring virtualization companies, here’s an eye-popping statistic: Roughly 83 percent of customers consider VMware their virtualization platform of choice, according to a survey conducted by CommVault. Here are some deeper details, plus other daily highlights from this week’s VMworld conference in San Francisco.
First up, the CommVault survey, which involved 479 participants. Among the feedback, according to CommVault:
- A total of 479 respondents underscored the continued rise in server virtualization, with 46 percent of those polled citing that between 51- and 85-percent of their total servers were virtualized while 21 percent reported successful virtualization of all or nearly all servers.
- VMware was listed as the virtualization platform of choice by 83 percent of those polled.
- The survey revealed that the top three factors driving server virtualization decisions among the respondents are: the need for improved business cost savings and efficiencies, customer responsiveness and improved service levels. The opportunity to leverage virtualization as an alternative disaster recovery strategy was also cited.
CommVault Simpana Software Helps Columbia College Support Student Growth and Business Transformation
Only Software Blog
by Staff Writer
August 30, 2010
As part of an enterprise data management upgrade designed to support expected student growth and business transformation within the college, Columbia College Chicago, the largest and most diverse private arts and media college in the nation, has upgraded its legacy Symantec Veritas Backup Exec environment with CommVault(R) Simpana(R) software.
According to the college, Simpana software plays an increasingly important role in reducing the cost, complexity and risk of managing a heavily virtualized environment. With more than 5,000 faculty and staff dependent on email for their work and research needs, Columbia College uses Simpana software to better control the growth and costs of storing Microsoft Exchange data, while enabling the college to respond more efficiently and effectively to eDiscovery actions. Message and document recoveries from large databases for eDiscovery previously took up to 50 hours, according to Columbia College. The Simpana Search module now enables searches for discoveries in minutes.
CommVault's Robert Brower on Distributed Support
IT Knowledge Exchange
by Barney Beal
June 8, 2010
CommVault, a New Jersey-based customer data management firm, recently conducted a benchmark survey of its contact center support services and achieved a 97% customer satisfaction rating, far above the rates similar sized organizations score, according to the Help Desk Institute benchmarks.
Robert Brower, CommVault's vice president of global customer support and services, discussed his company's approach to technical support via contact centers distributed across the world and how it measures its customer service.
In this 16-minute podcast, Brower describes:
- What method CommVault uses to measure customer satisfaction and what metrics it tracks
- How customer satisfaction plays into the company's growth plans
- The software used in CommVault's support and service infrastructure
- How CommVault runs a distributed support environment that has taken closure and response times and cut them by 300% in some geographies.
CommVault Plans Deduplication Across All Tiers
Storage Soup
by Dave Raffo
May 12, 2010
CommVault CEO Bob Hammer says his customers can't get enough of data deduplication, and the vendor will give them a lot more of it when its next version of Simpana launches later this year.
During CommVault's earnings call Tuesday, Hammer said deduplication was the major driver in the company's 31% revenue growth last quarter. With Simpana 9, he said, CommVault will increase the scale and functionality of its deduplication while integrating source and target dedupe capability. Hammer says CommVault's dedupe will go beyond anything on the market, "and there will be no close second."
I spoke with Hammer after the call, and he clarified a bit.
"This will be our third-generation of deduplication, and we will dramatically increase the scale with the addition of source-side dedupe and the ability to deduplicate secondary copies and dedue directly to the cloud," Hammer said. "Those are the major areas we'll expand."
Hammer says the expanded dedupe in Simpana 9 will take it closer to primary data.
"With source-side deduplication, you're getting close to that primary layer," he said. "We're combining that deduplication with the ability to more intelligently manage snap copies across hardware silos. It's not primary dedupe, but it's close to the primary layer. We're working with a number of hardware vendors that will be part of our release in the fall as well."
Hammer also says Simpana 9 will deduplicate "virtualization environments across the board – at the source and in some cases at the target, but we don't want to dedupe just at the target. It becomes an integrated seamless part of all tiers of storage, including the cloud and tape."
CommVault, Avnet Technology Solutions Ink Distribution Deal
The VAR Guy
by Dave Courbanou
May 12, 2010
CommVault has just signed a strategic distribution agreement through Avnet Technology Solutions. Here's a look at the relationship and the potential implications for Avnet's channel partners.
CommVault's flagship product is Simpana, a software platform that provides backup, replication, archive, search and resource management. It's safe to expect Avnet to connect the dots between its StoragePath focus and CommVault's offerings. And there are clues that CommVault could play a role in Avnet's CloudReady strategy.
Also, Avnet and CommVault seem to be working on a global scale; the duo has existing relationships in place across the UK, Ireland, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia.
Understanding & Mitigating the Risks of Cloud Technology
Orange Rag Blog
by Shannon Smith
March 1, 2010
As one of the newest computing frontiers, cloud technology is generating massive interest from organizations seeking substantial economies of scale by outsourcing all or portions of their computing, applications and data storage requirements. It's true that migrating data to an external cloud can lead to sizable savings on capital and operational expenses. There are also, however, a host of potential security and privacy issues that can arise and expose organizations to unique risks.
It's important to take the time upfront to determine the value of the data being placed in an external cloud, along with establishing proper Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and disaster recovery commitments to safeguard the information. Reputable cloud computing vendors should be able to articulate a sound business continuity strategy, which encompasses proven and audited data protection processes for minimizing downtime should an outage occur.
Ensuring data privacy also becomes more complicated in the cloud as data must be protected against unwanted access by the provider as well as the provider's other customers or outside intruders. As a result, companies should consider keeping highly sensitive data in-house, especially if the information contains sensitive customer data, trade secrets, or could be subject to legal privilege.
The issue of access can be unclear in cloud computing because a third party has actual possession of, and can control access to, an organization's data. Unlike traditional outsourcing models, where customer data is segregated and housed on separate devices, multi-tenant cloud computing environments co-mingle information from different organizations.
Deduplication Replication - CommVault
Network Computing
by George Crump
February 19, 2010
CommVault was one of the first enterprise back-up software vendors to integrate deduplication into their product offering. While it wasn't a surprise that they did this, it was a surprise that they were able to add the ability to deduplicate to tape. In my most recent regular blog post on Network Computing, I covered the trend to deduplicate on media other than traditional disk-based systems. CommVault's hybrid approach is a unique compared to how others perform deduplication, and worth examining.
Traditionally deduplication is done in just one area of the backup tier, either at the client, at the backup server (called a "media agent" in a CommVault environment) or on the backup storage target. While some vendors will allow you to choose where to deduplicate data from among these three locations, the workload for that deduplication is only done on the tier you select. CommVault uses a more hybrid approach. At the client they have always segmented the data to be backed-up into blocks, and they have had the ability to compress that block prior to sending. Now with deduplication, they add one more step, executing the algorithm to generate the hash code needed for deduplication. This offloads the creation of hashes from the back-up or media server. Unlike source side deduplication products, however, the CommVault agent does not perform a look-up to see if the block already exists on the backup server. The block is sent with its hash. The backup or media server performs the deduplication look-up as it receives the block.
By distributing the workload across the back-up tiers, CommVault feels that they alleviate the performance concerns of both source-side and target-side deduplication methods. Although the respective providers of those solutions will debate the point, source-side deduplication may impact performance of the client while performing the look-up for redundant data, and target-side deduplication can become a bottleneck when receiving that data. CommVault potentially gets around the problem by spreading the load throughout the back-up tier. For clients where even the five percent load of creating hashes is too much impact, there is an option to have the media server create the hash, but of course that increase in the performance requirements would need to be accounted for before configuring hash creation on the media agent(s).
Cool things Commvault is doing with REST
Storage Texan's Blog
by Tom Trogden
February 8, 2010
I've always been a HUGE fan of Commvault. They just rock. When I was a Systems Engineer back in Austin in the early 2000's, I don't think we had an account that I didn't take Commvault into to try and solve a customer's backup issues. AND WE DIDN'T EVEN SELL COMMVAULT !!! They had such cool technology that was clearly leaps and bounds above everyone else. Not to mention, they had some really cool people that worked for them as well (Shout out to Jeanna, Joelle, RobK and of course Mr Cowgil).
Fast forward a few years and the release of Simpana as well as the addition of native DeDuplication clearly gave Data Domain and various other deduplication solutions a run for their money. You would think that would be enough for one company!! I was pretty excited about their recent press release around adding cloud data storage as a tier option in Simpana. Dave Raffo over at SearchDataBackup.Com did a really nice job of summarizing the announcement. It's a clear sign that Commvault is still very much an engineering driven organization. Which is just AWESOME!!
I think the biggest nugget that I pulled out of the press release is Commvault's ability to integrate native REST capabilities. The more and more I hear about REST's potential, the more I get excited about some of the endless possibilities it can offer. In this case, it allowed Commvault to easily integrate their backup architecture to include 3rd party cloud solutions like Amazon S3, EMC Atmos and a slew of others. They didn't need to build an API for each vendor; they just relied on REST's open API to do that for them.
CommVault Delivers A Cloud-Enabled Platform
Network Computing
by David Hill
February 5, 2010
Everybody wants to go to heaven someday, but nobody seems to want to go now. Why so? Perhaps it's mere uncertainty. If we substitute the cloud for "heaven," the same seems to be true today. That is why it is so important for vendors to create products and services that can actually get clients to the cloud today while still keeping their feet on the ground. With that in mind, CommVault's ability to effectively extend its data management platform into the cloud provides a positive illustration that the cloud can provide real value today and not just someday. Such examples are important so that the cloud is not just dismissed as hype.
CommVault is a profitable, publicly traded, worldwide software company with annual revenues in the $250 million range, all accomplishments for which a single product platform company can be proud. Now that it seems to have navigated through the hazardous economic shoals of over a year respectively, CommVault, along with numerous other companies, are seeking new business opportunities.
A recent CommVault survey on the cloud revealed the challenge facing vendors. Only five percent of the respondents said that they currently utilize at least some cloud storage today, and only six percent more plan to do so in the next 12 months. Another 41 percent professed consideration of the use of cloud services in the future although they are not sure when. For them, "cloud heaven" is still not now. And a near majority - 48 percent - still does not plan the use of cloud services at all. So in order to help those who expressed an interest get to the cloud sooner than later, vendors are making their products and services available within the cloud. And CommVault is no exception.
CommVault set to go further with deduplication, cloud features
Storage Soup
by Dave Raffo
February 4, 2010
CommVault added block-level data deduplication to its Simpana data protection and management suite at the start of 2009, and introduced cloud connectivity this week. Now CEO Bob Hammer says there will be even more dedupe and cloud when Simpana 9 launches later this year.
Hammer says dedupe has been a major source of revenue for CommVault with 900 customers licensing the feature in 2009, including around 300 in the fourth quarter as CommVault increased total revenue 18% year over year to $71 million. So what's next for Simpana's dedupe?
"We will take deduplication up a level so it can enable us to manage data in and out of clouds and remote locations in a much more comprehensive way than we do today," Hammer said of CommVault's plans for Simpana 9. "Our objectives are to improve scale, the algorithms and the way we do source site deduplication. It's a pretty significant enhancement to the product line."
Hammer says CommVault is unlikely to seek more OEM partners beyond Dell for its deduplication, and will instead concentrate on picking up more channel distribution partners for Simpana. That's a different strategy than other dedupe vendors such as Quantum and FalconStor, who are trying to capitalize on dedupe demand by offering the software to storage vendors to compete with EMC's Data Domain and Avamar dedupe products.
CommVault Offers Data Storage for the Cloud
Redmond Channel Partner
by Lee Pender
February 3, 2010
It's called the integrated cloud storage connector, but it doesn't make CommVault a storage provider. Rather, it lets users integrate storage with cloud offerings from providers such as Microsoft and Amazon. That sounds pretty useful, actually.
Is D2D2C The Next Big Thing In Backup?
Network Computing
by Howard Marks
February 2, 2010
Today CommVault announced that their Simpana integrated backup and archiving software can now use public cloud providers in addition to local disk and tape as a data store. I hope that CommVault is, as they were with deduplication, leading a new wave of disk-to-disk-to-cloud (D2D2C)backup and archive solutions. While I firmly believe that there's a lot of life left in tape, especially for long retention archives with relatively low access rates, 25 years of consulting to organizations has taught me that tape drives, like backhoes and other heavy equipment, should be left to trained professionals. Small and even mid-size organizations rarely handle tape properly, leaving them exposed to data loss.
Even those mid-size organizations that understand the importance of sending backups off-site for disaster recovery purposes frequently have a courier from Recall or Iron Mountain pickup a set of tapes only once a week. Should they have to recover a major system from a failure on Thursday, restoring from the off-site backup would mean rolling the data back to the previous Friday when that tape was generated, while courier and box storage fees kept adding up. Add in that the tapes are never ready on time, or maybe the backup admin is on vacation or doing an emergency restore, the human factor means it's just not reliable.
With D2D2C, data goes off-site without user intervention, and that a good thing. In Simpana, a cloud provider (Nirvanix, Amason S3 and Microsoft Azure to start) is just like another disk repository, so the backup admin can define jobs to copy data from the local disk backups to the cloud. Simpana's built-in data deduplication minimizes both the WAN traffic and storage space needed, keeping the running cost of the solution to a minimum. Smart users will also encrypt their data in Simpana before sending it out to the cloud, essentially eliminating the security risk. The really paranoid could sign up for S3 and Nirvanix to cover cloud provider outage and failure risks.
Cloud Storage: Strictly a Backup Play?
IT Business Edge
by Arthur Cole
February 2, 2010
Some interesting data surrounding cloud storage came out this week indicating that, far from being a slam-dunk application, the technology is likely to face a far more nuanced acceptance among IT professionals for the time being.
Forrester reported the results a recent survey of more than 1,200 enterprise executives that showed barely 3 percent use the cloud for general storage purposes. But that's not the worst of it: A startling 43 percent report they are not interested in cloud storage at all, citing such issues as service level guarantees, security and reliability as the main reasons for holding back.
If there is a silver lining for cloud providers here, it's that interest in the cloud as a backup platform is slightly higher, most likely reflecting that such an approach would still house critical data on local storage infrastructure, reserving the cloud for older data or for emergency use.
While the survey may throw cold water on general-purpose storage plans of cloud providers like Amazon, Google and Microsoft, they can take heart in the rising number of backup and archive solutions that are adding built-in cloud compatibility.
CommVault Gives Cloud Storage A Seat At The Adult Table
Pack Rat
by Stephen Foskett
February 1, 2010
If your family was like mine, Thanksgiving was a two-tiered affair: The adults sat at the fancy dining room table while the kids had to sit in the kitchen, some even using a card table and folding chairs. You knew you were grown up when you moved up to the adult table. I guess this American coming-of-age ritual is pretty common with other rituals, too. There’s no formal ceremony, but everyone knows when little Johnny becomes just-plain John.
We see similar things happen in IT. New technologies and ideas are often given a pat on the head, a pinch on the cheek, but then sent to the kids table in the kitchen. Only mature technologies are taken seriously and granted equal status when enterprise architectures are defined!
One sure-fire way of determining when a technology is ready for prime time is when it is integrated with a major enterprise product. Sure, lots of products will support this or that, but thoroughly integrating a new technology requires serious effort. Not just any technology gets this kind of focus!
That’s why I’m pleased to see today’s announcement that CommVault has completely integrated API-driven public cloud storage with Simpana, their impressive data protection and archiving suite. It reminds me of that point when the backup products of yore finally adopted disk-based technology. Now there are three equal backup targets: Tape, disk, and cloud.
CommVault Cloud(s)
Data Protection Perspectives
by Lauren Whitehouse
February 1, 2010
In a move that makes it clear that CommVault is not in the cloud business, CommVault announced its intention to enable a cloud-based tier of storage for its Simpana suite of data management solutions. Previously, the company emphasized that it would not follow the lead of others in its segment and offer a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution based on Simpana. Instead, the company arms MSPs with its technology so that they can deliver a SaaS solution. Now, CommVault is enabling a cloud storage tier via partnerships with Amazon (S3), Iron Mountain (Archive Services Platform), Microsoft (Azure), Nirvanix (SDN), and soon EMC (Atmos).
Bravo CommVault. The company has always had flair for doing things differently... and for being aggressive versus the competition. There's no difference here. None of the other enterprise-class backup vendors have provided any direction regarding their cloud tiers for on-premises backup/recovery and archive solutions. Sure, Symantec has its Hosted Services offering (formerly SPN), which delivers a cloud storage tier for Backup Exec, but what about NetBackup? IBM has SaaS and cloud offerings within its BCRS group, but none currently integrate with TSM. And EMC? Well, Atmos should provide cloud capabilities for its Networker and Avamar solutions, but EMC Backup and Recovery Services group is focused on integrating its Data Domain storage tier first.
CommVault is attempting to make the move to a cloud storage tier easy. Simpana has gone through the integration necessary to communicate with other vendors' cloud-based storage ... no "complex scripting or the addition of costly, disparate cloud gateway appliances." This capability is offered at no charge through a one-click upgrade to the latest service pack (although clients still pay CommVault for the capacity of data managed by Simpana). Security and bandwidth concerns are being addressed with encryption, and compression and deduplication, respectively.
CommVault Hooks Up With Several Cloud Storage Providers
Storage Station
by Chris Preimesberger
February 1, 2010
CommVault seems to be a very sociable storage company. It is playing nicely with several hot online storage providers, and with the way cloud storage is growing, this appears to be a very smart move.
The New Jersey-based company announced Feb. 1 that it is shipping a new "cloud connector" for its Simpana storage software, one that enables users to move their on-site backup and archived data into either private or public cloud storage without a lot of coding or the need for a gateway appliance. That was the key first move that enabled all these new partnerships.
The idea, of course, is for CommVault customers to save storage costs. Instead of keeping everything on site, they can move their less-frequently accessed data from more costly tiered spinning disks and tape archives to lower-cost cloud storage accounts. This works for content from Oracle and SAP databases, Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint systems, and virtualized data.
CommVault Simpana 8 - update
Tech Talk with Homerun Networks
by Myke Reinhold
January 7, 2010
We have been running Commvault Simpana 8 for 4 months and to be quite honest, it has been flawless and great. As I mentioned before, we were concerned with future growth and what it would cost us for hardware for backups and more importantly, could we actually get backups the way we needed them?!? Well, we nailed everything and then some.
We have had to restore multiple files including Exchange (single message and multiple messages), Exchange store (testing purposes), Server 2008 DC (testing purposes), VMWare virtual server (testing purposes), SQL database, Server 2008 system state (testing purposes) and multiple files on file shares. Every single restore took less than 5 minutes except for the testing recoveries. The testing recovery is part of an on-going plan to prepare for a major project, but it was still rock solid and flawless.
Domain rebuild recovery - We are in the planning process of re-building the entire domain and infrastructure of our company and I have begun the testing of Server 2008 recoveries and disaster recoveries. So far I have tested recovering a 2008 domain controller after deleting multiple users and groups and replicating the change. Easy as pie my friend, everything went into place and the replication took place and the domain was back up and running in minutes. This domain rebuild has allowed me to test for just about every disaster possible and to document exactly every step in the case I get hit by a bus/train and the boss man has to take over for me.
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