Commvault Splits Disaster Recovery from Backup, Available as Separate Solution

Managed service providers and resellers can now offer backup and disaster recovery from Commvault as separate offerings.

The data protection software provider just released its new Commvault Disaster Recovery and Commvault Backup & Recovery solutions. Commvault had revealed plans to split the two offerings in July, moving to expand the company’s addressable market. Partners can also continue to provide both with the company’s new Commvault Complete Data Protection.

Until now, partners couldn’t offer Commvault’s disaster recovery and replication capabilities to customers without the backup solution. The limitation meant customers with competing backup solutions couldn’t pair them with Commvault’s disaster recovery and replication technology. Now that Commvault is splitting them into separate solutions, partners are no longer hamstrung by that restriction.

Commvault’s Ranga Rajagopalan

“So, even if customers are not using us for backing up their workloads, they can still use Commvault disaster recovery to deliver their business continuity needs,” Commvault VP of products Ranga Rajagopalan told Channel Futures. Rajagopalan said Commvault Disaster Recovery offers deeper replication capabilities than competing solutions, such as Zerto. “We are looking at a broader part of the perimeter than just the tip of the perimeter,” Rajagopalan said.

Disaster Recovery as a Service

Also, by separating backup and disaster recovery into two offerings, Rajagopalan said Commvault can lower the cost of its solutions. The solutions are all available with subscription-based pricing. Rajagopalan also said companies have historically only applied disaster recovery capabilities to their top tier-1 systems. Cloud infrastructure has provided an economic and practical alternative to implementing a disaster recovery site.

Consequently, Rajagopalan said many customers are now looking to add disaster recovery capabilities for tier-2 and tier 3 systems and applications.

“We’ve been getting a lot of strong validation for this, from partners from customers, that the demand for disaster recovery has expanded,” he said. “That is the reason why we wanted to separate out disaster recovery to make it super simple. We are introducing it at a very aggressive price point so customers can standardize on disaster recovery across a broader set of their workloads.”

Steven Hannah, a solution architect at Meridian IT, is among the first to test the Commvault Disaster Recovery preview. While Meridian IT, which operates both as a reseller and an MSP, offers Commvault backup, Hannah has had to use other replication tools for those with other backup solutions in their infrastructure. And to Rajagopalan’s point, Hannah said organizations are looking to provide DR for a more extensive set of workloads.

“Gone are the days of buying all of that cold hardware that’s never really going to be used,” Hannah said.

Until now, Hannah said he has had to use other tools to provide replication of on-premises workloads to the cloud. That’s the preferred model, he told Chanel Futures, because customers can justify disaster recovery as an operational expense. The vast majority are using Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, with a small, growing percentage using Google Cloud.

“The addition of these cloud DR capabilities that allow the replication of on-premises workloads to the cloud really aligns with what our customers are looking for,” he said.

COVID’s Impact on Disaster Recovery

Mercer Rowe, who became Commvault’s channel chief last year, noted that COVID-19 made partners realize customers’ disaster recovery strategies didn’t prepare them for long-term displacement.

Commvault’s Mercer Rowe

“What we’re hearing consistently is [customers] didn’t realize that the whole world was going to go offline for months and months,” Rowe said. “It’s been a real boon to the service providers’ business. And it’s part of the reason that that we are pushing aggressively in this this direction because we see that that there’s increased demand there.”

Rowe also emphasized that Commvault is now responding to feedback from partners that customers want solutions tied to specific outcomes.

“As a partner, you’re able to sell an outcome as opposed to selling a suite of products that may or may not all be tailored to what the customer is looking for. It also addresses the economic feedback … now you’re able to dial in size-wise, the product that you’re selling with the customer’s budget,” said Rowe.