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Commvault simplifies product count, condenses 20 into 4

Positive outcome from activist investor involvement

Just three months after activist investor Elliott Management invaded Commvault’s board-level considerations, the company has announced a radical simplification of its product strategy, shoehorning 20 individual products into four master ones and pumping improvements into its channel program.

CEO Bob Hammer has pounded the product offering into four converged master products with extended payment options;

Commvault Complete Backup & Recovery (CCBaR) is the main one and it can backup and recover workloads across:

  • on-premises,
  • multiple cloud providers,
  • physical servers,
  • virtual machines,
  • applications,
  • databases,
  • endpoint devices,

It includes;

  • disaster recovery (DR) capabilities,
  • snapshot management,
  • endpoint user protection,
  • mailbox protection for on-premises,
  • mailbox protection for SaaS offerings,
  • replication,
  • reporting,
  • integrated archiving.

HyperScale Technology is an add-on for Commvault Complete that delivers an on-premises, cloud-like infrastructure to support scale-out secondary storage that’s available in two ways:

  • Commvault-branded integrated appliance,
  • Software to be used with a customer’s own hardware.

Orchestrate is automated service delivery technology so users can provision, sync and validate data in any environment for DR testing, Dev/Test operations and workload migrations.

Activate enables users to comply with privacy regulations by detecting and taking action on data risks, use data insights to drive file efficiencies and accountability and provide an enterprise-wide view of data.

Commvault argues that these four products span a range of applications that other companies need multiple products to cover. CCBaR has a single pane of management and includes features that were previously optional add-ons, such as IntelliSnap for snapshot management, hardware replication support, reporting, synchronisation of virtual machines across locations, and file sharing.

CCBaR includes AI-style tools that analyses activity patterns and performance and, if operations need to be altered, reprioritises or modifies them to to meet defined SLA’s and outcomes.

It can be licensed by capacity, instances and optional end user add-ons. Customers can buy traditional perpetual licenses or pay be subscription instead.

Partners get help too

The partner program has been reshaped to include - warning; another list alert -

  • Partner Success Desk – 24-hour, world-wide on-demand service centre to provide RFP response questions, and field technical questions,
  • Partner Demand Center with access to Commvault’s marketing concierge team to help activate and execute marketing campaigns,
  • improved Commvault Quote Center for partner organisations to generate and provide product quotes in minutes,
  • Refreshed Partner Portal with faster access to sales tools, marketing resources, and enablement assets,
  • Expanded Business Development Funds,
  • New worldwide head of channels, Scott Strubel.

Commvault Complete Backup & Recovery, HyperScale, Orchestrate and Activate are available now through Commvault and its partner network.

This restructuring action should equip Commvault and its partners compete more effectively with fast-growing competitors like Cohesity, Rubrik and Veeam, newcomers like Druva, as well as the cohort of incumbent legacy data protectors such as - not a exclusive list - Acronis, Arcserve, Assigra, Dell EMC, IBM and on to troubled Veritas.

Customers and channel partners alike should be able to select Commvault products matching their needs and get a priced quote much faster than before.

Marked-for-exit CEO Bob Hammer, far from filling in time while a replacement is being hired, has moved with dispatch to reshape the product set, licensing and partner program.

It’s almost as if he’s taken the generally unwelcome and resented incursion of a feared activist investor, for such is Elliott’s reputation, and turned it into a positive force for change. Class last act Bob; really. ®

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