The Commvault 5Ps of change

[Preamble: I have been invited by Commvault via GestaltIT as a delegate to their Commvault GO conference from Oct 9-11, 2018 in Nashville, TN, USA. My expenses, travel and accommodation are paid by Commvault, the organizer and I was not obligated to blog or promote their technologies presented at this event. The content of this blog is of my own opinions and views]

I am a delegate of Commvault GO 2018 happening now in Nashville, Tennessee. I was also a delegate of Commvault GO 2017 held at National Harbor, Washington D.C. Because of scheduling last year, I only managed to stay about a day and a half before flying off to the West Coast. This year I was given the opportunity to experience the full conference at Commvault GO 2018. And I was able to savour the energy, the mindset and the culture of Commvault this time around.

Make no mistakes folks, BIG THINGS are happening with Commvault. I can feel it with their people, with their partners and their customers at the GO conference. How so?

For one, Commvault is making big changes, from People, Process, Pricing, Products and Perception (that’s 5 Ps). Starting with Products, they have consolidated from 20+ products into 4, and simplifying the perception of how the industry sees Commvault. The diagram below shows the 4 products portfolio.

Pricing and Licensing are made simple as well. Customer now has a choice of

• Capacity (Front-end Terabytes)
• Instance (Per VM or per Socket, or Physical)
• Optional Add-ons (Mailboxes or Endpoints)

Both Products and Pricing revamps are not easy, especially with a company with a 20-year history. I am pretty sure that Commvault has made revolutionary changes to their Processes in the past many quarters, putting the right foundation for their business that will prepare them for the future.

And the change in Commvault starts with their People. From the top, CEO Bob Hammer and COO Al Bunte have been the consummate hosts to the delegates. You can see them joining everyone, even in this morning’s breakfast. I especially enjoyed the banter of Chris Powell, their CMO and Don Foster, their Director of Solutions Marketing. Commvault People are affable, eager to give the delegates the best conference experience.

And all these 4 Ps – Products, Pricing, Process, People – are leading towards the industry and market Perception of Commvault. For several years, I have viewed that Commvault as a sleeping giant.

In my early involvement with Commvault (you can read about my story in my previous blog), I have seen how Commvault had leapfrogged past leaders like Veritas and IBM. Commvault continued to dominate the market leadership for Enterprise Backup and Recovery for 7 to 8 years in a row. But then it felt like status quo. The Enterprise Backup and Recovery market stagnated, until newer upstarts came in to disrupt the market 2+ years ago.

Last year, I saw Commvault coming out of its slumber as the market leader. One eyelid opened, and then the next. The Hyperscale appliance was announced, together with the ScaleProtect solution with partner Cisco. This year, Commvault has built upon that Phase 1 foundation with more powerful and scalable Hyperscale appliances, together with more significant workflow for progressive on-premises and cloud data movement and data management in Commvault Orchestrate and data classification and governance in Commvault Activate. I wrote about Commvault Activate yesterday.

These slew of changes with Commvault is to change the Perception of Commvault in the IT market, end users and partners. It is no longer a complicated business partner to do business with. It has put together 3 resell partnerships with NetApp, Cisco and HPE respectively. Commvault powers Backup-as-a-Service with HPE Greenlake. It has simplified Products and Pricing, and these changes position Commvault a friendly business partner. It has made revolution changes to its internal and external Processes and shift their focus to build and grow their Partner ecosystem. They announced Commvault-as-a-Service for customers, and their Hyperscale technology and appliance got a boost (and a new bezel!) in its portfolio. Its People are committed to give their customers, partners the best experience ever. You can see they work a bit harder for you.

That .. to me is a giant awakening. Yes, this is the new Commvault!