Microsoft Endorses CommVault®/Sun™ Partnership; Interview with CommVault Chief Evangelist Randy DeMeno, Part 1 of 3

Randy De Meno joined CommVault® in 1994 and led CommVault into the heterogeneous data management segment of the industry.  Randy holds patents on a number of CommVault's technologies including the Granular Application Integrated Backup and Recovery capabilities.  He also spearheaded the partnership with Microsoft in 1999 and still manages the strategic relationship.  Randy leads CommVault's application efforts for their Exchange, Active Directory, SQL Server, SharePoint, Notes/Domino, as well as other Windows based solutions.  On a personal note, Randy is married with three children and leads the CommVault Ice Hockey team which has enabled CommVault and partners to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for various children's charities over the years.

Q. Sun reports that they selected to offer CommVault software in their recent announcement with CommVault, because Microsoft endorsed your technology. Do you have any insight as to why Microsoft made this endorsement?

R. Microsoft introduced and endorsed the CommVault/Sun partnership for the key reasons they chose to partner with CommVault back in 1999. CommVault utilizes Windows and other Microsoft technologies as the platform to provide heterogeneous data management with key granular management of Exchange and SharePoint. CommVault learned many years ago how critical it was to offer granularity for the recovery and management of items like Exchange messages, SharePoint items and Active Directory objects/attributes. We used that early granular management foundation as a base for enabling today's content specific search capability.

Sun also wanted to leverage their hardware to take advantage of the hardware upgrade to 64-bit Exchange Server 2007. Sun realized they had some powerful hardware but wanted to work with the technical software leaders in data management for Exchange, which led them to CommVault. Sun quickly realized that a lot of Exchange customers have SharePoint and that also accelerated Sun's interest in working with CommVault.

A very poor, humorous analogy I've heard at CommVault/Sun executive meetings sums it up: Even Nintendo (with apologies to Microsoft's XBox) realized they couldn't just sell a way-cool looking gaming console and they needed great software to compliment it. So while Sun's servers and storage are analogous to a gaming system and big screen High Definition display, the CommVault software becomes analogous to Donkey Kong - 64 (pun intended on the "64" for 64-bit).

Q. You've been at CommVault before the Microsoft relationship began. What is the key to the strength and resiliency of the CommVault Microsoft relationship? What is the secret sauce - or is there any?

R. The secret sauce is technology second, people first! The most important part of the CommVault /Microsoft partnership over the years has been the people, relationships and trust built up over nearly 10 years. Microsoft has a lot of great people who are great technologists that also happen to be good business people. That matches up well with CommVault. If we could only share some of the practical jokes that have been played on each other's dev teams over the years it would explain it much more easily.

The relationship works since we make it easy for each other. I've seen many companies fail miserably with Microsoft since they feel they have to put an army in front of them. In reality it's the other end of the spectrum: limit the people who interact with Microsoft, but make sure they are overwhelmingly, technically sharp.

As for the technology, Microsoft is good at divulging their roadmap and we're good at enhancing and embracing that technology with great software.

Parts 2 and 3 of this interview will appear over the next few weeks. In the meantime, you can contact Randy directly at rdemeno@commvault.com.