Commvault sets sights on becoming an analytics provider

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• Posted by Dan Swinhoe

• on November 08 2017

Commvault this week announced its intentions to become more than a backup and recovery company and move in the analytics space.

“It's all about your data,” said Commvault CEO Bob Hammer during the company’s Commvault Go event in Washington DC this week, “and the remarkable technologies that we have developed to help you better protect, manage, and derive more value from your data.”

Hammer said analytics are the new “table-stakes” and that Machine Learning & AI-powered analytics are becoming “fundamental and instrumental” to businesses.

“Actionable insights that drive business decisions are becoming the heart of all organisations, including Commvault.”

One of many companies riding the ‘Digital Transformation’ train, the main theme at Go is ‘doing remarkable things with data’ and how the company can use its indexing know-how to create more value from the data customers are storing.

Hammer was keen to point out that instead of Information Technology – which is focused around legacy ideas of centralised, stored and contained data – we should be moving towards Data Technology, where data is shared and collaborated around easily.

“Data is at the centre of this transformation; it helps organisations make faster and more insightful decisions, and data management is the foundation for digital transformation.”

The New Jersey-based company announced a suite of new analytics applications, the first of which are to be focused around information governance and data privacy with an eye to helping with GDPR compliance.

”As we make the move to DT (Data Technology), data analytics will drive more and more of our mindshare and investment.”

Given the company’s problems around generating profits – the company announced a $4.7 million loss last quarter – the company is keen to highlight new innovations.

As well as an Endpoint Data Protection as a Service for laptops and other such devices, the company announced a new Hyperscale Appliance designed to help organisations manage secondary data. Available as both a Commvault appliance or via designs provided by partners – Cisco is the first to provide its own version of this offering, but companies such as Fujitsu, Lenovo, HPE, Super Micro Computer, Huawei and Dell-EMC will all be offering their own variants using Commvault’s software. 

Interestingly, the company’s own version of the appliance will be sold via a subscription model: companies will subscribe to the appliance for three years, and Commvault will replace the hardware upon renewal of the contract.

The company furthered its concept of being open and everywhere by announcing  a partnership with Google’s Cloud Platform – meaning the company’s services are available on the big three Cloud platforms of AWS, Azure, and Google.

It wouldn’t be a technology conference without some shade being thrown at rivals. Hammer described Dell EMC as “really good friends who try to kill us every day”.

He described Commvault as a single platform as opposed to "a bundle of stuff” before talking about Dell’s most recent announcements:

“Michael [Dell] made a big announcement recently; he's spending $1 billion to build a fully distributed platform. I've got news for him, it's here. You don't have to look for it, we spent 20 years building it, and it's a premium platform and we're going to be innovating a lot fast than you are. Game on.”

And spare a thought for the company’s CMO, Chris Powell. Commvault is sponsoring Polar explorer Robert Swan’s latest venture to the South Pole, but Powell will be joining Swan for the final 10 days of the expedition. Swan is doing the trip as part of his 2041 Foundation and will be making the trip using purely renewable energy, while Powell will be placing a Commvault flag at the Pole.

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