Commvault Reveals Plans to ‘Supersize’ MSP Business

The EMEA channel chief at Commvault says the vendor is on a mission to “supersize” its managed services business.

Commvault’s Jamie Farrelly

“We’ve had the MSP business for a long time, but we need to supersize it. It is the key go-to-market for the future,” Jamie Farrelly, VP EMEA channels and alliances, told Channel Futures. “Being able to deliver services to a customer is super important to add value and make profit as a partner. It absolutely has to be how a partner moves from driving the traditional resale software approach to moving to a true as-a-service model.”

This week Commvault announced the availability of Metallic for MSPs. It coincides with the data protection platform’s one-year presence in EMEA.

Farrelly said Commvault already has “a good spread of existing MSPs that take our existing complete technology as an MSP SKU and orchestrate that into the services that are driving out to market.

“Our goal is to double down, focus on those partners who are capable and committed and see the growth and vision we’re helping them to see,” he said.

Farrelly said the plan was also to help existing reseller partners transition to managed services. He added that Commvault is already working with global design partner SoftwareONE and has three or four other firms lined up to onboard.

Metallic as a Door Opener

John Tavares, Commvault’s global channel chief, has said that by 2023, two-thirds of Commvault’s total revenue will come from partners delivering managed services.

In June, Commvault announced a new partner program with specific pricing for managed services. Besides providing specific subscription rates, the program lets partners achieve tiers based on the recurring revenue they generate.

Today, Commvault says it has a growing number of MSPs offering Metallic data-management-as-a-service (DMaaS) solutions. This week Veristor, GM Sectec, and Data Management Professionals South Africa (DMP SA) signed up to deliver Metallic-powered solutions.

Metallic for MSPs centers around a new MSP portal. Commvault said it “offers partners a globally available, scalable, always up-to-date, secure and monitored platform.”

The vendor said Metallic offers partners data protection for a range of workloads. This can help customers avoid data loss and downtime, safeguard against cyberthreats, and meet growing data demands for data compliance and governance. It does this through “simple SaaS delivery and fast onboarding.”

Farrelly described Commvault’s MSP business as “going through the roof.” With the launch of Metallic MSP, “it’s just going to get bigger and bigger,” he said.

Shai Nuni, VP EMEA, Metallic, described the platform as a “door opener.”

Commvault’s Shai Nuni

“Fifty percent of our new logos are coming thanks to the Metallica SaaS solution,” he said.

“Customers … are now looking at Metallic as the best alternative to cloud because their existing legacy backup protection systems cannot scale to the level of simplicity that we can and support all those different workloads on one smart platform.”

Commvault also announced Metallic Security IQ this week. Embedded as an optional feature across the entire Metallic portfolio, the Security IQ dashboard provides customers with insights into threats impacting their data landscape and their data backup security posture in their Metallic cloud environments.

‘The New Commvault’

Announcing Metallic two years ago, Commvault’s incoming CEO, Sanjay Mirchandani, said, “This is the new Commvault.”

Mirchandani introduced the new go-to-market executive team and promised new opportunities for growth.

“When Sanjay came into the business, it was a huge transition,” said Farrelly. “That two-year transition has been at a technology level, at a go-to-market sales level … At a channel level, that’s what I came in to take hold of nine months ago.

“We are in growth mode, and build mode, both at the same time. And that’s why it’s so exciting because you’ve got a business that’s growing, but you still build at the same time.”