Data protection program for managed service providers

OCEANPORT, NEW JERSEY: As the popularity of software as a service (SaaS) continues to grow, CommVault has formalized a program for partners offering or planning to offer managed data protection services to small and mid-sized businesses (SMB).

The program builds on CommVault's proven ability to meet the needs of managed service providers, and creates opportunities for new partners interested in delivering these services using CommVault Simpana software as part of a SaaS solution.

With increasing emphasis on data storage requirements and regulatory pressures facing many SMBs, CommVault's managed services program offers service provider partners the ability to license market-leading enterprise software and, in turn, create affordable, reliable online backup services tailored to their customers' disaster recovery, high availability and compliance needs.

"Over the last five years, we've seen increased traction in the managed services arena with those partners currently delivering backup service capabilities using CommVault technology as the engine," said David West, CommVault's vice president of marketing and business development.

"Formalizing this program allows us to focus on our core competency of developing innovative software while working with partners to package and distribute it to the SMB market. Optimized with hundreds of features specifically to meet the needs of providers looking to offer data protection services, our software for managed service partners is secure, scalable, cost effective and easy to use," he added.

To meet the specialized needs of service providers, CommVault Simpana software offers key reporting, security, performance and speed-to-implementation benefits, including:

•  Bandwidth throttling tailored to smaller network connections;
• Resumptive backups and operational windows to enable backups to be stopped and restarted from the point of interruption (for a priority restore) or network connectivity loss;
• Selective views so clients can log in via the web and see status on only their jobs and view only their data; and
• Image level backup for larger file systems.

SaaS deployments have moved beyond supporting online functions such as CRM, communications, web analytics and e-services and now extend to information and data protection management.

According to IDC predictions, SaaS will represent approximately 30 percent of the software market by 2007 and Gartner predicts it to top more than $19 billion by year-end 2011. Much of this growth is due to the fact that SMBs have needs that are analogous to larger organizations but don't have the resources or level of IT expertise of an enterprise. With a SaaS strategy for data protection, customers pay monthly for the services they need without having to purchase anything up front.

"As confidence levels increase, companies have really advanced in their maturity with respect to leveraging the Internet. So it's not surprising that IT managers are favoring SaaS solutions that store mission-critical data off-site," said Lauren Whitehouse, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group.

"Now, with so many service providers actively selling the same type of SaaS products, innovation and competitive differentiation are critical. CommVault has been able to set itself apart with its unique, single platform and unified management console approach. CommVault Simpana software makes it easy for companies looking to implement a cost-effective, reliable data protection solution and simply add archiving or replication capabilities later as they need them."