CommVault and Sun Flip-Flop at Microsoft Tech-Ed

Every year at every trade show, it always seems some vendor comes up with some gimmick or give-away that captures every one's fancy. A couple of years ago, flashing blue pens were all the rage - as I recall it was 3PAR who started that craze. Click a button, it flashed blue; click it again, it flashed faster; click it a third time and it thinly provisioned blue ink (I'm kidding about the thinly provisioned part). At another conference, another vendor made it a point to give away the most offensive orange colored T-shirts that I have ever seen to everyone at the conference in the hopes that everyone would remember their company. Well, I remember the T-shirt but obviously their strategy backfired because both the company and the T-shirt shared the same fate.

In any case, this year's attendees at Microsoft Tech-Ed can thank, Brittanie De Meno the 15-year-old daughter of CommVault's Chief Evangelist, Randy De Meno, for one of its more memorable gimmicks: "flip-flops". Since Tech-Ed was held in Orlando, she proposed that CommVault give away flip-flops since that was something that everyone traveling there could use but probably didn't think to pack. However there was a catch. To get a pair of flip-flops, attendees had to stop by two booths: CommVault and Sun Microsystems. Each booth had one flip of the flop (or flop of the flip as the case may be) so to receive a pair of flip-flops, users had to stop by both booths and hear a short presentation from each company before they would receive a pair of flip-flops.

Of course, maybe the flip-flops are symbolic of the changing nature of the CommVault and Sun Microsystems relationship over the past decade. In 1998 when CommVault was coming to market with the software that is now the CommVault® Simpana® software suite, it had to make a choice as to what platform would host its software: Either continue with Unix operating systems like Sun Solaris or switch to Microsoft Windows. When it decided to develop its core data management software on the Microsoft Windows platform and just provide support for UNIX operating systems, Sun and CommVault parted ways.

Over the next decade, nothing much changed in the relationship. While there was no specific animosity between CommVault and Sun, the fact that there was so much personal animosity between Microsoft and Sun at their respected leadership positions filtered down to the rank-and-file employees and even, to a certain degree, to their respective partners. So beyond the cordial "Hello's" and "How do you dos", CommVault and Sun continued to stay at arm's length.

It is only in the last couple of years that things began to change, in part precipitated by a changing of the guard at the leadership helms in both of these companies and that Randy stayed in contact with 2 longtime Sun executives that he worked with back in the 1990s; Sun's Chief Technologist for storage Art Licht and Sun's Chief Scientist, Hal Stern. New people brought new attitudes into both of these companies and with it the recognition that even the unthinkable might be possible: synergies between Microsoft and Sun Microsystems. This would be accomplished by running Microsoft's new 64-bit software on Sun's 64-bit hardware.

Why the flip-flop on Sun's part in regards to Microsoft? Love or hate Microsoft, Microsoft is in nearly every corporation and Windows is, for the most part, hardware agnostic. Sun also is in most major corporations but was watching Microsoft Windows erode its market share running on hardware from it competitors. That's when the lights came on Sun. Sun realized that, yes, it sells Sun Solaris but, on a larger scale, it is putting a lot more emphasis in becoming a solutions company and its hardware could support Microsoft Windows. By selling Microsoft Windows running on its hardware, it could increase its sales as well.

So what does this all have to do with CommVault and Sun Microsystems giving away flip-flops at Microsoft Tech-Ed? Simple. The CommVault Simpana software suite is entirely based and optimized on 64-bit architectures. However to take full advantage of CommVault's code, companies need 64-bit hardware that supports Microsoft Windows 64-bit software.

Many companies are planning to adopt Microsoft Windows Server 2008 as well as other 64-bit application software from Microsoft (Exchange Server 2007, SharePoint Server 2007, etc). However to optimize its performance and data management capabilities, Microsoft needed hardware partners that could take advantage of 64-bit software, hence the new relationship between Sun and CommVault.

It's also obvious that Microsoft had a hand in the new CommVault/Sun alliance as they have hosted over 30 seminars in the past 12 months at Microsoft offices where Microsoft focused on Exchange/SharePoint, CommVault on Data Management and Sun (yes, Sun field people presenting at Microsoft offices) presenting about their hardware.

The flip-flop giveaway by CommVault and Sun was a hit among Tech-Ed attendees but it also carried with it a larger message as well. Two companies (three if you count Microsoft) that had previously a limited partnership with one another are now finding common ground that may give end-users new reasons to do a flip-flop of their own. Because as corporate data stores grow and performance expectations climb, companies need more performance and capacity. Having access to a newly integrated, end-to-end 64-bit software and hardware infrastructure option from CommVault, Microsoft and Sun provides these companies with a new option that may prompt a similar change in their buying habits.