Commvault added a new piece of bling to its cloud-native data protection chain with the launch of Metallic Cloud Storage Service.   

The new service offers a fully integrated cloud storage target for Commvault’s backup and recovery software and HyperScale X appliance that can be managed through the Commvault Command Center, thus eliminating the need to work with an independent cloud vendor.

Ranga Rajagopalan, VP of products at Commvault, said this allows customers to have the benefits of cloud without necessarily being a cloud expert. Rajagopalan explained that Metallic Cloud Storage Service “is just like using a disk or a tape target,” meaning it converts IT administrators — that might not know anything about the cloud — into experts overnight. 

“The need for accelerating cloud transmission has never been more than what we see now,” Rajagopalan said. “In parallel, there's been an exponential increase in the number of ransomware attacks.” These two trends, he said, are driving the need for “air-tight, secure cloud storage.” 

Moving to the cloud is one thing, but establishing a safe environment is another. Metallic Cloud Storage Service employs the three-two-one backup rule by making three copies, two of which are in different mediums (disk and tape), and one off-site. The new offering hosts the off-site storage copy with Commvault's arsenal of ransomware protection and recovery mechanisms, making it “fully encrypted, virtually air gap,” Rajagopalan said. And, because security credentials for accessing cloud storage are managed by Commvault software, there is no accidental access or deletion of backup copies in the cloud, he explained.  

For IT administrators, backing data up to the cloud isn’t the monster under the bed, it’s the bill they get hit with after restoring it. Rajagopalan said the new service “takes away that fear of the unknown” as pricing includes all of the egress that customers need.

The Cloud Storage Service launch follows Microsoft and Commvault’s multi-year partnership agreement announced earlier this year. Metallic’s SaaS data protection portfolio – including Metallic Endpoint Backup and Recovery Metallic Office 365 Backup and Recovery – are featured applications for SaaS data protection in the Azure Marketplace. 

Under the agreement, the two companies will engineer a SaaS offering combining Commvault’s Metallic Cloud Storage with Azure Blob Storage and include deep integration with other native Azure services.

The tighter integration of Metallic and Microsoft Azure extends the reach of the Commvault technology in the Microsoft universe. Furthermore, it brands Metallic as the SaaS backup of choice in the Microsoft cloud universe for both its customers and partner network. It also gives channel partners a broader range of options to offer enterprise customers looking for cloud-based data protection and management as well as open avenues to generate recurring revenue.

“Where there is a strategic partnership, like what we have with Microsoft, it makes it easier for us to be in sync with the Microsoft sellers,” Rajagopalan said. “The increased adoption of Microsoft Azure, the level of interest that you see around Teams, Office 365, Dynamics 365, all of these are pointers to the greater appetite for SAS workloads and the greater brand essence that Microsoft has in this environment. And, accordingly, the need for SAS data protection capabilities for those workloads – which is really where Metallic comes into the picture.”

The launch also comes as Commvault approaches Metallic's one-year anniversary. Within the last year, Commvault has undergone a reformation of sorts, repositioning its products to favor simplicity and flexibility in alignment with the market’s demand for interoperability as multi- and hybrid-cloud environments continue to gain momentum. 

Commvault has been a big player in the data protection and storage management markets for quite some time. As a veteran in the industry, the company’s traditional backup products have gained a bit of a reputation for being complex. Nevertheless, the company was recently named a leader in Gartner’s market evaluation for backup and recovery for the ninth consecutive year. 

According to the research  firm, Commvault supports the broadest range of applications, databases, public cloud environments, operating systems,  network-attached storage (NAS) systems, and storage arrays. Additionally, during the past year, the company introduced several new features to protect the largest number of public cloud virtual machine instances in the market, Gartner said.