Creating the Extensible Services and Support Organization; Interview with CommVault VP Robert Brower

This is the second part in a two-part series with Robert Brower, CommVault's VP of Services and Technical Support, Americas. In this entry, Brower examines how his team is evolving to meet the emerging enterprise requirements of data management and protection and why creating an extensible services and support organization is now a prerequisite to supporting enterprise companies. Brower explains that in order for companies to get beyond their current break-fix mentality of managing backups, they need software that transforms corporate data into information. This only occurs if the software is properly implemented in the first place and then customers understand how to use and manage the software long term. This begins with a Services and Technical Support organization that wants to see companies realize this objective.

Jerome: What are some of the initial questions and surveys that CommVault uses to gather data when it goes into a new customer account?

Robert: The CommVault Professional Services (PS) team follows a series of information gathering steps to first document the customer environment. CommVault initially sends an email to the customer's account team so he or she can gather preliminary technical information about that customer's environment. Once that information is gathered, the team does a risk assessment of the client account as well as a gap analysis so it can close those information gaps in the customer account. The team then meets with the customer to identify and set expectations plus gather the final information it needs about the customer's environment. At this point, the PS team has a thorough baseline to work from as it builds out and deploys the software in the customer environment.

Jerome: As CommVault grows its Services (PS) and Technical Support organization, how is it leveraging the information and insight it gains from past and current projects to improve the process going forward?

Robert: One of CommVault's objectives is to leverage the experience we gain at each customer account and make that experience extensible throughout our services and support organization so we can use that regardless of where our customers are located. By doing this, CommVault can treat every customer as a special project and not try to fit them into one specific mode.

Let me explain. CommVault recently did a global implementation with a company that had locations in multiple geographies around the world. While some sites were obviously in North America, the company also had remote offices in locations such as Africa and the South Pacific. The biggest challenge we find in accounts like these is that the company often does not have enterprise data management standards, especially at its remote locations. So as part of the implementation we need to create standards that are suitable for these remote offices.

This is easier said than done. In this particular case, some of these remote offices only received supplies (new tapes, computer equipment, etc.) on a quarterly basis which had to be flown in so CommVault had to adapt the client's backup processes to the reality of each of these sites. To facilitate this, CommVault provides a worldwide portal to which every CommVault engineer has access. Using this portal, engineers can search for like circumstances in previous customer engagements and use that knowledge when configuring and supporting new environments. In these remote offices, CommVault was able to take the reliability of the backups from under 50% to nearly 90% which is fairly good considering the environment in which they need to operate.

Jerome: What about CommVault's VARs? Are customers better served by buying directly from CommVault or can they expect similar levels of support when buying from VARs?

Robert: CommVault applies the same standards to our partners as it applies to its engineers. To facilitate this, CommVault gives them access to the same information that its engineers have access to. CommVault also offers boot camps for engineers so whether a customer calls CommVault or a CommVault partner, they should have the same type of experience since they have access to the same information and tools to which CommVault's engineers have access.

Jerome: What is your vision for the future of this group?

Robert: No customer wants to hear from the Professional Services or Technical Support team that the product is broken and we are working on a fix. Instead CommVault wants its customers to assume that the product works. If they view it that way, they can think about their data from a more holistic perspective. This allows customers to understand what data they have and where it is so they can access it when they need it. As part of doing that, companies need to better understand the product that they are using and how to use it. Our objective is to help them accomplish that by helping them convert the data they manage into information that they can use to run their business. By having a co-joined Services and Technical Services team, CommVault can move its clients closer to this goal.