Commvault underlines need for data management and protection

Commvault has outlined the areas where it expects to gain growth in the year ahead as the data player starts to advise partners about what to expect in the “new normal”.

The vendor has been hosting its Connections event and put the focus on not only data management but information security, with the company keen to highlight the ransomware area.

Marco Fanizzi, vice-president and general manager, EMEA at Commvault, said there were three main areas where the business was expecting growth as the world starts to move beyond Covid-19.

That list includes protecting data from malicious attack and ransomware, using the cloud as an operating model with the flexibility to manage data on and off-premise, and finally the firm is expecting software as a service (SaaS) to be a growth area.

“Covid-19 has been an unprecedented wake-up call and it has reminded organisations around the world of the importance of resilience, agility and scalability of systems and to accelerate the digital transformation of the business,” said Fanizzi.

“Many companies are struggling for their lives to stay in business and stay competitive and keep innovating. The cloud as a model is fast becoming the only viable answer to these imperatives.”

He said the focus on data had never been greater and the pandemic had only underlined its importance. “Data is a real-time currency, it is an intellectual asset, it is a competitive advantage and it has an element of risk and is the starting point for every business plan,” he said. “Never before, in many years of work in this sector, have I seen data being so central to every discussion.”

Mark Jow, vice-president technical services at Commvault, added some more details to where the impact of digital transformation would influence demand, talking about not only data protection, but acknowledging that containers and automation would also be investment areas.

“Accelerating digital transformation is a key area, especially as we see those businesses that survived and thrived during the pandemic were the ones that had a strong digital capability or an as-a-service presence,” he said.

On the ransomware front, Nigel Tozer, director solutions marketing at Commvault, said that not only had the number of attacks risen significantly, but criminals were targeting backup platforms to strip users of that protection.

“It’s no longer focusing on end-users and their PCs at home, it’s targeting commercial and public sector organisations because they know that is where the big money is,” he said. “Ransomware is getting smarter, the way it is deployed is getting smarter and they are attacking backup technologies.

“The simple reason is that if you have good backup and disaster recovery in place, then you don’t pay the ransom.”

Tozer said that as well as making plans to protect data and have recovery plans tested and ready to go, there was an increasing need to think about the integrity of the backup system.

“What can you do today?” he said. “Review your current position, and have you put in place the training and cyber security patching that you could? And is your backup system hardened and are the backups immutable?”