Commvault Go 2019: Round up

This year’s Commvault Go event saw customers, partners, vendors and Commvault employees from all around the world converging on Denver, Colorado, between 14^th – 16^th October 2019 in their fourth annual conference.  The event covered a myriad of topics around data management including disaster recovery, workload migration, endpoint protection and hybrid-cloud, to name just a few!

The conference was full of news and updates, and I’m going to focus on the three areas that I felt were most relevant in today’s market. If you have some time you can find out more information and watch the keynotes here. 

You can also watch my interview on The Cube here.

Summary

• Commvault Activate: This product has been around for a couple of years now, but it was great to see it getting a headline slot.  Activate enables you to analyse data to provide insight or search capabilities across large datasets.  It can be utilised if you’re an existing Commvault customer or as a standalone product by searching your front-end systems.  The product has many use cases across e-discovery, helping with regulatory compliance (such as GDPR or CCPA), storage optimisation and applying security best practice. Read more about Activate here.

• Metallic: This was a new venture announced by Commvault on the first day of the event, a Backup SaaS solution that is a first for the company.  At launch the service is capable of protecting Office 365, endpoints, SQL, file system and virtual workloads both on-premise and in public cloud.  The initial launch is in the US only but expect further country launches in the coming months.  Metallic looks to be a feature rich, scalable and easy to operate solution which should be strong in the SMB and large business market.  Further information and a free trial can be found online here.

• Hedvig: The announcement of Commvault’s first acquisition was in September 2019 and since then it’s been apparent that the integration of both companies has been a high priority.  In a matter of a few months, there was clear alignment across senior leadership and the development teams.  Hedvig is a software defined storage offering across on-premise and public cloud, enabling the capability across hybrid-cloud with a simple and scalable solution.  At present the products are separate, however it is expected to see Hedvig technology in the Commvault products in the coming months.  I would expect Hedvig to still be possible to purchase standalone, but to enable even greater capability, the pairing with Commvault’s existing product set would be required.  Imagine the possibility of managing primary and secondary storage with one policy through a single pane of glass; this could be a game changer in the world of data management.  Further information can be found here.

Commvault already has a very deep and proven heritage when it comes to data management, which was on show at the event.  There was also a new buzz around the company with some of these announcements, their innovation seems to be increasing and expanding into new areas that provide greater options and capabilities to the market and their existing customer base.  So much so that they have been dubbed the #NewCommvault.

What's to come?

In 2019, we find ourselves in the midst of a data revolution.  Due to the rapid growth in hybrid-cloud, IoT devices, cyber threats and the increasing data landscape, it can be a challenging time to protect and manage your data.  There is no sign of the IT industry reaching a plateau in data growth as the bar keeps raising due to factors such as new technology developments, higher quality media files or just keeping more copies for resiliency.  International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that the Global Datasphere will grow from 33 Zettabytes in 2018 to 175 Zettabytes by 2025 (Source: Data Age 2025, sponsored by Seagate with data from IDC Global DataSphere, November 2018). Commvault have positioned themselves to drive forward innovations to support this growth, and we should look forward to seeing what they come up with next.

Here at Softcat, we think that the two most valuable assets within organisations today are people and data. Data is growing and presenting new challenges daily, and is critical to all organisations and their success. 

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