Commvault returns fire at emerging vendors presenting 'alternative facts'
Commvault claims emerging vendors in the space offer nothing that Commvault does not already have in its arsenal
Commvault has returned fire at emerging vendors in the data protection space by claiming they ‘present alternative facts' and don't offer anything not already in Commvault's own portfolio.
In a recent article with CRN data protection newcomer Rubrik claimed to be displacing incumbent vendors like Commvault by providing a full stack of back-up and disaster-recovery technology that is easier to implement.
The article, published on Tuesday, prompted Commvault to contact CRN and chief communications officer Bill Wohl accused Rubrik and other emerging vendors of presenting "alternative facts".
He claimed that emerging vendors will often invest heavily in marketing and create an impression that only new companies can be innovative, which is not the case.
"There is no doubt that that's the technique that is being used," he said.
"If you want to get feature for feature and function for function there isn't anything that Rubrik does that Commvault hasn't already been doing, but I can give you an exceptionally long list of things that Commvault does that Rubrik doesn't even have on the drawing board.
"If you get behind the marketing hype and really look at what they can accomplish and what we can accomplish there really isn't a comparison.
"There is nothing wrong with what Rubrik is doing - in fact they have brought some interesting ideas and new technology and we congratulate them on their ability in just three years to gain a foothold - but most of what they said to [CRN] that is in the story could be labelled by Kellyanne Conway as alternative facts."
Wohl added that start-ups in the data protection world will eventually hit a wall as they scale further up into the enterprise space because they will typically focus on one particular element of technology.
He explained that they lack the versatility to deal with the amount of different environments that enterprises will typically have data stored, ranging across datacentres, virtual environments, mobile devices and various different cloud environments.
What a lot of the new players are struggling with as they come into this environment is they can't scale into that challenge," he said. "They might be good at one particular area.
"Veeam is a good example. They have grown dramatically, their focus is entirely in the virtualised and they have made extraordinary good use of being new in the market and very aggressive marketing and they've grown their business dramatically, but the bloom is off the rose as enterprise customers have discovered a bit of Veeam fatigue.
"The cost of the infrastructure to really scale to the enterprise and their inability to go across all sorts of physical and cloud environments is holding them back."
Magic Quadrant
Wohl picked out Commvault's standing in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for back-up and recovery as independent proof that the vendor is considered the market leader.
The most recent version, published in June last year, sees Commvault ranked as the top vendor in the industry ahead of IBM, Veritas, EMC and Veeam.
The report praised Commvault's ability to operate across multiple cloud environments and storage arrays, and said that pricing adjustments have made it a more affordable option.
"After achieving success with its bundles and responding to market pressures, Commvault has completed a second stage of pricing revision to get rid of its reputation as an expensive vendor, and convert to a customer-friendly, net-price maintenance model," it stated.
"Customer support and satisfaction feedback remain very favourable, and over the past year, Commvault has again made product enhancements that further its ability to scale into very large environments."
Partner view
Chesterfield-based reseller COOLSPIRiT has been a Commvault partner for around six years and a Platinum partner for around three of those.
Managing director Damon Robertson explained that he is seeing his clients wanting to utilise more of Commvault's offering, because they didn't realise that it already offers most of the solutions that emerging vendors are marketing so heavily.
He explained that it can sometimes be difficult for a vendor to market itself when it has such a broad range of capabilities - a problem that emerging vendors often don't have if they have a narrow product focus.
"Commvault has a massive depth with the product," he said. "There five or six pillars to Commvault and we find that most of our users are only using one, two, or three [to start with].
"How do they back up Office 365 and Salesforce [for example]? All of that is available in Commvault, so if they've had Commvault for three years it's really refreshing when we go in to customers and they say ‘we're using Office 365 but how are we going to back it up?' They've already got the product to do that.
"When new disruptive vendors come out with a price point for, say, virtualisation, customers come to us and we say ‘you've already got the product, all you've got to do is open that tab and away you go'."
Robertson said that end-users can sometimes be tempted by a new vendor offering a slick product and fast installation, but said that the safer option would be to rely on an existing vendor with a proven track record.
"[Clients] are swayed by shiny bells and ‘click click click' - the Apple-type scenario of implementation ease - but that can very easily be overcome by saying ‘that's a point solution, it will only do this [one thing] for you'.
"Commvault has been developed over 15 years from the ground up so all these have been thought up, developed, implemented and tested by Commvault already. We generally don't see anything that a disruptive vendor is bringing out not in Commvault.