In what CEO Bob Hammer calls the key to Commvault’s strategy, the company has expanded its appliance from the original model into a full family, with a smaller one node offering for remote offices below it in the market, and a much denser model for larger deployments.
The new Commvault HS 3300 appliance — with those snazzy new bezels
NASHVILLE – At their Commvault GO event here, Commvault announced that they have expanded their single HyperScale Appliance into a full family. The existing model HS 1300 appliance has been joined by the Commvault Remote Office Appliance, the RO 1100, with 5 to 15 TB of usable capacity, and the Commvault HS 3300 HyperScale Appliance, with between 174 and 262 usable TB., three times the capacity of the HS 1300.
“These appliances are the key to our strategy,” emphasized Bob Hammer, Commvault’s Chairman President and CEO, in his opening keynote.
The line began when Commvault launched their original appliance in October 2017, touting its disruptive capability in the market. It has done well since it was introduced.
“Its sweet spot has been mid-tier organizations,” said Phil Wandrei, Director, Product Marketing at Commvault. “It has been broadly picked up by our channel partners. It has been bought by customers who wanted the availability, resiliency and scale of a Commvault solution in the simplicity of an appliance form factor. Traditional separate backup and recovery specialists are declining in the enterprise, so customers are looking for something that doesn’t require as much hands on involvement.”
In the year since the appliance has been on the market, customers have provided feedback to Commvault.
“They told us that they liked our original Commvault Hyperscale Appliance, but the feedback from them indicated that they would like versions that were both smaller and larger,” Wandrei said. “They wanted a smaller one for remote offices, and which would also be more cost-effective. So we went to a single node scale-up architecture. The HyperScale appliances are based on standard 3-node configurations, so these are considerably less expensive. The smaller appliances are a very nice fit for remote offices. They can all be effectively managed through our Command Central user interface as well.”
The small one-node appliance, the RO 1100, is also extremely simple to deploy.
“Customers told us that this was a priority and we listened,” said Don Foster, Commvault’s Senior Director of Worldwide Solutions Marketing. “The RO 1100 goes from box to backup in 15 minutes.”
Wandrei sees the RO 1100, as more of a small office offering for Commvault’s traditional customers, rather than an entrée into a lower market segment.
“It gives us a much stronger offering, especially with our existing install base, which now has a lot more choice,” he said. “These will allow us to go a little bit downstream. But we have to recognize where our channel partners play. We aren’t going to be competing with the likes of Barracuda, in a volume play at the lower end of the market.”
The new Commvault HS 3300 HyperScale Appliance is a fully converged appliance that tightly integrates server, storage, and Commvault Complete Backup and Recovery for larger use cases than the HS 1300 was able to address. It is also aimed at giving that Commvault install base more options.
“The HS 3300 helps us close the gap with customers who want to buy everything through us,” Foster said. “It has a much higher density, with 174 to 432 TB raw capacity. Previously, 170 TB had been our ceiling.”
“We have seven technology partners with validated reference design configurations of the appliance to implement larger-scale reference designs, and that has been the only option that customers have had for larger environments,” Wandrei said. “Our recommendation has been that if you required three or more appliances, you should look at a reference architecture instead, because you simply had greater efficiencies. Now those customers have an appliance option with this.”
There’s a further – minor – benefit as well.
“The HS 3300 has very sharp looking new bezels,” Foster joked.
For partners, the new appliances are a very big deal.
“We’ve made it much easier for them to be able to size and quote an opportunity,” Wandrei said. “Part of that is our new simplified packaging and pricing. Installation and support is also much more cost-effective with the appliance. Because the appliance is an integrated solution, it makes it easier to provide professional services around support. In addition, because the ultimate goal is to have a happy and successful customer, you have to go back if there are issues. With an appliance, the partner is much less likely to have to go back, and that saves them money.”
The RO 1100 is shipping now. The HS 3300 is scheduled to ship in December.
