Data balloons and cloud bursts prompt rethink

Beverley Head
Wednesday, 01 February 2012 07:55

The challenges which enterprises are facing in terms of managing ballooning end user data stores, and information stored on virtual servers or in clouds, has prompted CommVault to update its Simpana suite of information management tools, bringing forward the release of some functions originally slated for inclusion in Simpana 10 which isn't expected to be released before 2013.

Enterprises on a capacity licensing deal with CommVault will automatically have access to the updates which are being released today. Organisations which have an SKU style licence will either have to move across to a capacity licence or invest in a new SKU licence according to Paul McClure, product manager for Asia Pacific and Japan.

Mr McClure said that the new functions being released were intended to help companies which had fast growing mobile computer fleets better protect and manage their information assets. The tools would also support companies using virtualised servers or cloud computing by providing a single set of tools to manage issues such as backup, archive and reporting for data regardless of where it was stored.

He added that CommVault's approach was to use a single common code base to manage all information assets no matter where they resided, which could be managed from a single administrative interface. This allowed companies to take snapshots, manage replication, de-duplication and archiving all from a single location.

The so called Simpana Edge Protection is specifically focused on protecting data on end user computers (mobile or desktop) and has embedded deduplication. Once data has been captured it can be searched or accessed through any Windows, iOS or Android device.

Although Simpana is not targeted as providing information management for data stored on smartphones or tablets, Mr McClure said it was possible to use these devices to access the backup or recovery information once collected. To some extent this would allow enterprises mobile access to data sharing functions similar to those offered by services such as DropBox.

The new release of Simpana 9 has also been optimised for Microsoft SharePoint environments.