Commvault has extended its data protection software portfolio with further integrations into Microsoft Office 365.
The moves reinforce Commvault's continued focus on day-to-day innovations even as the storage company seeks a new CEO; reorganizes its sales and marketing go-to-market efforts; and takes steps to address concerns from activist investor Elliot Management.
On the R&D front, the backup and data management company says the increased Office 365 services will improve data protection, migration, security, eDiscovery, and compliance for its customers.
As Commvault points out, the migration from on-premises and hosted Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint environments to Office 365 requires customers to adapt their on-premises data protection, retention and security strategies to a cloud-delivered solution.
The Commvault Data Platform and Commvault’s Endpoint Protection enables customers to extend their on-premises policies to Microsoft 365, Office 365 and Windows 10. A common data platform reduces the risks and instability associated with point solutions.
Commvault claims the effort delivers:
- Accelerated migrations by archiving redundant, outdated on-premises data prior to migrating to Office 365
- The ability to enable a heterogeneous, storage-agnostic, polycloud eDiscovery and search solution for the enterprise that includes Office 365 content
- Office 365 data management to assist in meeting General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements
- Advanced data management practices and reduced storage costs as a result of built-in data deduplication and compression
- Reduced operating costs through Commvault’s broad storage integrations and the use of commodity storage including Microsoft Azure Storage
- Data governance designs that support the need for regulatory compliance and audit requirements with advanced archiving and retention rules
- Enable Microsoft Azure Stack to be a hosting target for Office 365 data management
These latest enhancements are available immediately, the company says.
Intense Competition
The latest Commvault moves come at a key time for the company and its partner ecosystem.
Competition remains intense on multiple fronts. Rival Veeam spent last week doubling down on an enterprise data protection strategy during the VeeamOn 2018 conference amid a rapid march toward $1 billion in annual revenues. New Veritas CEO Greg Hughes is realigning that company to more effectively address subscription services.
Within the MSP ecosystem and across the startup market, multiple backup and data protection offerings now support Office 365.
Of course, Commvault isn't standing still. The company has bolstered its channel leadership in recent months. But the evolution isn't done, and big challenges remain.
Commvault Advance Transformation Plan
Amid weaker-than-expected Q1 results and external pressure from Elliot Management, Commvault earlier this month announced:
- The search for a new CEO to succeed N. Robert Hammer, who is expected to remain chairman once a successor is found.
- A restructuring and reorganizing of field-facing resources in sales and marketing to be directly tied to key routes to market with alliances, distribution, service provider, and global SI partners.
- A worldwide cost-reduction effort, including headcount reductions of approximately 4 percent of the workforce.
- Supplemental pricing and packaging options in the company's core data protection offering, and upcoming new product announcements that are aligned with key routes to market.
We'll be watching to see how the CEO search unfolds.
Additional insights from Joe Panettieri.
