With its recent move in the cloud Comvault says SMEs now get access to enterprise grade solutions at an affordable cost and with the security and protection they need. In a chat with SME Channels Ramesh Mamgain, Area VP (India & APAC), Commvault talks more about its plans around cloud.
What does the recent tie-up with Cisco means for you and the customers?
In June, Commvault became a Preferred Solution Partner within the Cisco Solution Partner Program. As a member of the program, we are now able to quickly create and deploy solutions to enhance capabilities, performance and management of the network – which captures value in the Internet of Everything.
In India, we can see a keen interest from customers, cloud service providers and enterprises to gain access to the Cisco Validation Design (CVD) reference architecture for Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS). The BaaS architecture for public/hosted, hybrid, and private cloud environments has been jointly tested and developed. It enables organizations to accelerate time-to-market and drive new business opportunities in a rapidly evolving and competitive market.
You recently announced your move into the cloud. Please elaborate your cloud strategy and how it has changed the way of doing business today?
Cloud storage as a backup target has been a core part of our solutions for a while now, and today with 21 vendors and growing, we are the leading provider for data management software optimized for cloud storage platforms.
Although it’s very easy to get data into the cloud, it’s now becoming apparent to CIOs that it’s not really easy to data it out. As organizations continue to create a vast amount of data and utilize cloud repositories and applications, they are increasingly challenged in being able to access that content from different repositories and locations, including cloud.
Besides, with the pay-by-consumption pricing model, customers find a new wave of unexpected costs, mostly in the form of unforseen and large bills from the cloud provider. With Commvault’s de-duplication in the cloud and automation which streamlines and optimizes cloud usage, companies of all sizes are gaining control of their consumption with greater governance, which allows them to deliver value while managing costs in the cloud.
Further, with a data management platform that is application-aware and links all structured and unstructured data across sources in one single solution, we enable our customers to access their data from cloud in a consistent format. This lets you view all the data available to you as a business, and enables you to move beyond using cloud as a remote source by driving value for the organization.
What are the key security trends in the Indian market today?
In addition to cloud strategies, one of the most significant security trends in India today is around mobile and remote workforce protection. India is currently the third largest mobile phone market in the world, with IDC expecting us to overtake the United States by 2017 as the second largest smartphone market globally. While this presents a huge opportunity for eTailers and Digital India, IT teams are struggling to maintain control of information and processes as we move to BYOD, open sharing sites like DropBox and remote working cultures.
CIOs are looking for better ways to track and manage information on mobile devices, including cloud utilization, as well as being able to securely wipe a lost or stolen device quickly after it happens. Users are storing company information and documents on sites like Dropbox and OneDrive as organizations struggle to keep up with their demands, and provide the security, accessibility and governance for this information.
Managed Service Providers are a key growth market in India,
particularly in the SME vertical as mid-market organizations look to leverage enterprise grade solutions managed through a provider. There’s a huge amount of interest in Backup-as-a-Service and DR-as-as-Service as it offers an easy entry into the cloud for organizations of all sizes, while reigning in cost and IT burden. Cyber security is another area keeping out CIOs and IT managers awake at night. Particularly in ransomware, cryptolocker and Trojan encryption virus attacks. What companies don’t realize is that paying the hackers to unlock the files may not even get them access to the information in the end anyway, but may open them up to more attacks in the future. By having a professional backup solution in place either as backup-as-a-service or a standalone solution, organizations can mitigate the risk of such events and prepare the organization back up and act quickly if they face a threat.
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we are the product of choice for many service providers offering Backup-as-a-Service and DR-as-a-Service which is becoming the preferred method for resource strained SME businesses. [/quote]
As per you what are the key concerns of CIOs regarding data security and management?
CIOs will continue to be faced with increasingly complex and rapidly growing amounts of data. Now is the time for them to regain control of their information, bring it together in a single view and future proof their business for what will only be further disruption and escalating data growth. We increasingly hear from our customers that you have to get the data right before you can truly drive value through analytics and business intelligence. And that’s where we continue to be the leader, particularly with our new platform which has been built to enable openness, flexibility and agility.
End users are demanding faster access to information and with increasingly technical know-how, they want to rely less on IT and instead be able to ‘self-serve’ their data requirements as and when they need. If CIOs aren’t able to support these needs from users, they will be challenged with company information being taken off the network where it is protected and secured, to public cloud sharing sites and BYOD devices. This is why our new platform connects will all applications, cloud platforms and other sources, regardless of whether it is under management by Commvault. This is changing the industry and enabling our CIOs to regain control of their most strategic business asset, information.
It’s not only enterprises who need data protection and information management but SMEs too are asking for it. What is the role Commvault can play here?
We have a strong presence in the SME market globally and there are two main reasons why it’s one of our fastest growing customer segments. Firstly, we are the product of choice for many service providers offering Backup-as-a-Service and DR-as-a-Service which is becoming the preferred method for resource strained SME businesses. By choosing a service provider to manage their information, SMEs get access to enterprise grade solutions at an affordable cost and with the security and protection they need. Further, the pay-by-consumption model ensures they only pay for what they use and scalability is infinite.
The second reason we are seeing growth in the SME market is because our platform is flexible and suits business needs. For instance, a customer may come to us for basic backup and recovery needs to provide reliability and assurance to the business. As they grow, so does their data volume and the number of sources it comes from. Soon, they realize that they are running out of storage faster than they can buy and provision it, and their costs are skyrocketing as a result. They try to optimize their data management by unlocking the archiving capability, still in the Commvault platform so they can introduce this very quickly.
Now, they have a policy-driven data lifecycle strategy that might move data to a more affordable storage as it becomes redundant or untouched for 12 months. With Commvault’s de-duplication capabilities, they can also compress the amount of data under management. In some cases, it reduces by 90 percent, which can have huge cost savings and network efficiency benefits. The customer may then consider cloud, yet are unsure what data to send to the cloud and what to keep on-prem. Commvault can help them not only understand what data makes sense for the cloud, but also ensure they can still access that information easily and quickly.
There are many capabilities that can be unlocked when an SME business requires them. Commvault has been built from the ground up, and hence ensures a common platform to manage the different data management needs, removing the complexities often faced with fragmented solutions.
What is Commvault’s USP compared to other cloud storage integrators?
Embracing the cloud can be a complex decision. They often wonder – public, private or hybrid? For SMEs, considering their options can be a daunting task. There’s also the question around how to securely move data to cloud and how to ensure the monthly ‘pay-by-consumption’ bill doesn’t come as a shock.
Commvault allows businesses to manage all of their cloud delivery model choices from a single, holistic solution. It has been built to enable businesses to quickly adopt private, hybrid or public clouds now, while remaining flexible to respond quickly to their needs in the future.
When compared to other single point solutions, we have simplified pricing and packing options, highly relevant to the SME market to bring virtual machine management, application recovery, end-point data protection and email archives into a common management platform.
Another differentiator is the ability to manage cloud operations more efficiently due to the universal view that Commvault enables, as well as automated cloud policies. With this, businesses can automate and get smart about managing cloud resources, ensuring de-duplication which removes copies of data so there’s only one version that’s stored, and move that data as needed across cloud platforms as it becomes redundant to the organization.
What are Commvault’s expansion plans and focus areas?
We recognize the impact of cloud, mobile, exploding volumes of data, and the need to modernize legacy systems are driving new data requirements. Our key areas of focus in development and enhancing our product portfolio will be around enabling these six key needs: No vendor lock-in (open), Always on and always available, Keep pace with data growth, velocity and variety, Embedded, extensible search and analytics, Seamless and universal access, and Control and visibility from inception.
