It’s no secret that Commvault has a legacy in the enterprise IT backup space. The company was incorporated in 1996, but has its roots as a Bell Labs development group in 1988. Traditionally, having a legacy like that is a strength and touchstone for a business. But in the world of IT, 1996 (to say nothing of 1988) can feel like a long time ago. With the inescapable march of technological progress and innovation, having a history could potentially turn into a liability. Such an organization might be unable to quickly meet the needs of changing markets, or expand quickly into adjacent lines of business. Smaller and more focused startups are always poised to disrupt.
Thanks to some keen foresight by Commvault, that’s not where the company finds themselves on the eve of Commvault GO 2018. It’s been a little less than a year since their last customer conference, and since the company announced Commvault HyperScale. This represented Commvault’s new scale-out data protection infrastructure, and is a major component of Commvault’s modern solutions portfolio.
The market for scale-out data protection certainly has a lot of momentum. We’ve seen several newer startups making clean sheet plays at this, both in software and hardware. HCI is now a mainstay of enterprise IT, and data protection solutions have played no small part in this. Commvault HyperScale isn’t about reinventing this. Rather it’s about focus.
There are no dearth of organizations that realize that scale-up approaches to data protection just aren’t feasible or desirable today. But many of these startups don’t provide a path for these organizations to get there. Similarly, while cloud migration is on the tip of everyone’s tongue, the truth is that this requires a smart approach to be feasible. Simplistic initial attempts at moving to the cloud have caused a lot of organization to boomerang back to on-premises solutions as cost and resiliency concerns quickly piled up. Many companies and organizations today need a solution that integrates storage arrays, hypervisors, applications, and the full range of cloud provider solutions. That’s where HyperScale is focused, and why it’s receiving substantial interest from Commvault’s customer base.
In this, Commvault is not straying from their software roots. Commvault is providing the integrated management software layer, allowing organizations to monitor and report on operating systems, compute, storage and data protection within HyperScale. But the company has been able to leverage their strong partnership network to have this certified across a wide variety of hardware providers. This should allow almost all organizations to use the hardware they’re comfortable with, and avoid any lock-in to one particular vendor. Cisco, Dell EMC, and HPE are probably the most notable hardware partners in the US, but Fujitsu, Lenovo, SuperMicro, and Huawei mean that there are relevant partners available wherever your organization is located.
After having Commvault HyperScale on the market for a year is one thing, but educating both their existing and new customers how to best use it is another. That’s where having a customer conference will really benefit everyone in the Commvault orbit. New and interested customers can learn specifically about Commvault’s latest and greatest appliance approach to data protection. Perhaps more importantly, existing customers will get a look at how they can get out from under a scale-up approach to data management, and embrace a modern, cloud-ready, scale-out infrastructure. That’s what the attendees of Commvault GO 2018 can look forward to, both in the general session and keynotes, as well as the 150 breakout sessions.
