Commvault backup-as-a-service portfolio expands by 3 options
Commvault enhances its cloud-based data protection suite by offering its flagship Complete Backup & Recovery software as a service, with new services for VMs and native cloud apps.
The Commvault backup-as-a-service portfolio will gain three services: Commvault Complete Backup & Recovery as-a-Service; Commvault Complete B&RaaS for Virtual Machines; and Commvault Complete B&RaaS for Native Cloud Applications, which protects Microsoft Office 365 and Salesforce.
Commvault will make the Complete B&RaaS options available for subscription on the AWS Marketplace, Microsoft Azure Marketplace and the Commvault Marketplace by December 2018. The platform is currently in private preview for select customers.
Commvault Complete Backup & Recovery is the vendor's flagship data protection product. Its capabilities include disaster recovery, snapshot management, endpoint user protection, replication and archiving. The move to offer full-featured Commvault backup as a service was driven by customer demand, according to Sabrinath Rao, general manager of worldwide cloud business at Commvault, based in Tinton Falls, N.J.
"All of our customers are moving to SaaS, whether we like it or not," Rao said at the Commvault GO user conference last week. "When they're buying SaaS infrastructure and SaaS applications, they're expecting us to deliver a protection product as SaaS."
Commvault service seeks to ease cloud difficulties
Rao noted that, despite the demand, public cloud customers are being underserved in two ways. , for enterprise customers, "public clouds lack the tools that surround enterprise workloads, like backup, user access, security and policy management," he said.
Second, for the SMB customers with fewer IT resources, public clouds lack simplicity.
"The midmarket and SMB is looking for a friction-free experience -- three clicks, I'm done, kind of experience," Rao said. "No backup product is able to deliver that."
All of our customers are moving to SaaS, whether we like it or not. When they're buying SaaS infrastructure and SaaS applications, they're expecting us to deliver a protection product as SaaS.
Sabrinath Raogeneral manager of worldwide cloud business, Commvault
Offering Commvault backup as a service is a move to address both shortcomings.
With simplicity as a primary goal, Commvault backup as a service charges on consumption-based, pay-as-you-go pricing models, with options for fixed-term subscriptions, as well. Also, offering the service in the same marketplaces where customers shop for SaaS infrastructure and apps is important to providing that "friction-free experience" the vendor is aiming for.
Commvault last year launched Endpoint Data Protection as a Service for backup and recovery of laptops, desktops and other devices.
Phil Goodwin, research director at IDC, said market analysis studies support Rao's findings about customers adopting cloud and feeding a growing demand for cloud-based data protection.
"Our research shows that nearly all application deployments have a cloud element, so being able to operate in the cloud is pretty critical," Goodwin said. "New application deployments on premises are pretty much flat. On the broad scale, all the growth is in the cloud."
Goodwin added that selling Commvault backup as a service makes sense, as it's the logical choice for the vendor to grow alongside the market.
"One of their critical paths is to create that ecosystem within the cloud -- to be able to develop cloud service providers who can use their product to go to market and thereby create demand for Commvault products," Goodwin said.
