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.

Despite the dearth of new product announcements from Microsoft, CommVault's Chief Microsoft Evangelist, Randy De Meno, found no shortage of users to talk to at the conference. Randy and the CommVault team that he had on hand are still compiling their notes from the conversations they had with the hundreds of IT professionals who stopped by CommVault's booth. Official numbers from Microsoft Tech-Ed had the tally at over 9,500 IT professionals in attendance and, to hear Randy tell it, all but 10 or 11 of them stopped by CommVault's booth.

Of course, exhibiting at Microsoft Tech-Ed is nothing new for CommVault. It has done so for at least a decade and this year, like every year, Randy found that he continued to learn as much from the users attending the conference as he hopes they learned from him.

Part of the reason Randy particularly enjoys meeting users at Microsoft Tech-Ed is that hard-core Microsoft techies flock to this event. These are the individuals who administer Microsoft's products on a daily basis and have a firm handle on the strengths of Microsoft's products but also understand its shortcomings. As a result, they can articulate at the technical level the specific challenges that they are facing and/or are beginning to encounter on a day-to-day basis. These individuals Randy specifically looks forward to meeting because in the past they have provided him significant insight as to what specific new features that the company needs to introduce into the CommVault® Simpana® software suite to meet new clients' needs as well as keep existing clients satisfied.

Randy specifically points to a number of ways that Simpana 7.0 software integrates with Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint as being a direct result of input he has received while attending past Microsoft Tech-Ed events, including enhancements to :

• Message Level Recovery. CommVault Simpana Data Management software for Microsoft Exchange Systems supports message and item level recovery. Using this feature, administrators can access the main console and drill down to recover specific messages within the Microsoft Exchange message store, usually in just a few seconds. Users can also recover Outlook extended information like Calendar Items and Contacts. This avoids the need to first recover the entire Exchange message store on a separate server and then search through it for the desired messages as other data protection products may require.
• Microsoft Exchange Server Release Independence. Many companies have used Microsoft Exchange for years and may now have backups of Exchange data stores that span one or two versions of Exchange. The challenge for companies becomes restoring data created in an earlier version of Exchange (Exchange Server 5.5, 2000 or 2003) after companies have implemented a newer version such as Exchange Server 2007. Using CommVault , companies can access older Exchange message stores and then restore those into newer versions of Exchange, even from 32-bit environments to today's 64-bit hosts . It even works in reverse as backups of Exchange 2007 message stores may also be restored into older versions of Microsoft Exchange.
• More Granular Options When Archiving Files. Four years ago one attendee requested that CommVault give them more granular options when setting file archiving policies. Specifically, this user wanted the option to override the policy that automatically archived files when they reached a certain age. Rather they wanted the option to set a policy so they could keep the most recent version of a file on production disk regardless of its age while archiving older like versions of that file. Since then, this option has now become a feature in the current CommVault Simpana software suite release.

Microsoft Tech-Ed is about more than just new product releases. While it certainly serves that purpose, it gives vendors and users alike to connect on a more personal level and can give vendors needed insight into what problems users are really having so they can innovate more quickly. It also gives users the opportunity to scope out and identify those vendors that are listening and being responsive to their needs. In some respects, no new Microsoft product announcements at Tech-Ed 2008 are almost a blessing in disguise.

Microsoft Tech-Ed is a great opportunity for users and vendors to connect. But users need to do more than connect, they need to use this show as opportunity to identify those vendors that are stepping up to the plate that solve the problems they are having today as well as anticipating the problems that they will have in the future. The fact that CommVault puts such emphasis on bringing its top developers to Tech-Ed so these connections can occur should contribute to giving users continued confidence that CommVault is as interested in solving your problems tomorrow as it is today.

However some of the issues that CommVault® Systems' Senior Director of Information and Access Management, Simon Taylor, is encountering when archiving data are becoming more esoteric in nature. CommVault is used by businesses around the globe and the challenges it is starting to encounter go well beyond just archiving data stored on network file servers or Exchange email systems. Globally companies are being asked to manage archived data on a more granular level to satisfy specific laws.

Jerome: I have heard the term "agility" used in conjunction with archiving data. Why do companies need to concern themselves with data agility within their archived data stores?

Simon: Despite what people may think, archiving changes constantly. Laws are constantly changing which can force companies to re-classify data they had previously archived under a different set of rules or policies. Legal holds are creating new sets of problems of companies. Now you must add another set of retention and management rules on top of rules that you already have in place. These new rules may only apply to a subset of the data. Legal holds require companies to take segments of the information that are managing now, group it separately and then manage it by this separate set of policies.

The situation is more complicated in Europe. In Europe, individuals have a lot of rights to the data that companies retain about them. For instance, in the UK under its Freedom of Information Act, an individual can pay $20 and request that a company provide that individual with all of the information that it has about that individual. The company not only has to produce the information it has about that individual in 10 business days, companies are also subject to the EU Data Protection Directive. This requires companies to delete copies of that data that the individual wants removed. This includes all copies of the data across the company to include archived and backup data stores.

Adding to the complexity, companies need to keep records about hazmat (hazardous material) incidents. In those circumstances, companies may need to keep this information on an individual for specific hazmat related requests in the archives while restricting access to the information for any other purpose.

Jerome: This trend towards individuals having a say-so in what information companies keep about them - how do you see this impacting corporate management of archived data?

Simon: Individuals will have much more influence and companies will need to be flexible enough to comply. In the US, things are already changing to give individuals more say-so as to what data companies can keep about them. What this all means is that companies can not assume decisions made today are set in stone. Circumstances can change in 8 - 10 years and they will need to adapt to those changes. This is the big change in archiving: it needs to adapt to change.

Part 1 in this 3-part series took a look at the forthcoming paradigm shift that needs to occur in information management.

Part 2 in this 3-part interview series took a look at how CommVault's SIS facilitates information management and access as well as how CommVault works with hardware vendors that do block-based deduplication.

Jerome: I've examined CommVault System's implementation of SIS in the past but primarily looked at the benefits of SIS and deduplication from the perspective of capacity and space savings. What benefits does SIS offer when other factors like information search and data mobility are considered?

Simon: Regardless of which product (archiving or backup software) that one uses within CommVault's Simpana suite, these products store data in the same object store. While storing data in this format consumes more space than when deduplicating data at the block level, by retaining each file in its entirety and treating it as an object, certain permissions such as read, write, delete and retention can be assigned to this object (or file). This creates some interesting possibilities from an information search and data mobility perspective.

Consider this first from an information search perspective. Data that is deduplicated (block-based or SIS), may be indexed when it is initially stored. However a problem that can arise is that files may need to be re-indexed later on (new laws, new search criteria, etc.). In circumstances where files are deduplicated at the block level, to re-index these files may require that the files first be reconstituted before they can be re-indexed. Stored in a SIS format, companies do not need to worry about the overhead and wait times that reconstituting the data would introduce to re-index the data.

Now consider it from a data mobility perspective. Most companies still use tape in some fashion in their data protection and archiving scheme. However the problem with tape is that you cannot store deduplicated data on tape. If moving deduplicated data from disk to tape, the data must again be reconstituted before storing it on tape. SIS again avoids this scenario since the file is stored in its entirety on disk so companies can more easily move data from disk to tape with minimal performance impact or wait times. In fact, companies can opt to migrate large files within their SIS repository to tape as a means to keep their costs down.

Jerome: So how do you explain the large number of partnerships that CommVault has with vendors that provide archiving and deduplicating products if SIS provides so many benefits?

Simon: CommVault currently has partnerships with many vendors that resell archiving and deduplicating solutions: Data Domain, EMC (Centera), HDS (HCAP), HP Integrated Archive Platform, IBM DR550, NetApp SnapLock, Permabit Enterprise Archive and Plasmon UDO Archive Appliance just to name a few. We can support all of these platforms without spending a great degree of time integrating their products with ours because of CommVault's architecture. It provides sufficient flexibility so that users can select whatever technology best fits their requirements.

Because of this, we see certain synergies emerging from these partnerships as organizations today will typically implement a tiered infrastructure with most companies using a least a couple of storage tiers. A specific benefit we see is companies using CommVault to facilitate the introduction of Green IT into their organization.

"Green IT" is becoming an important component of many companies' IT strategies. In the US, Green IT is primarily about saving power while, for the rest of the world, saving power is also part of their objective but it is also about social responsibility and achieving higher degrees of efficiency. These other solutions allow companies to meet those objectives while they use CommVault as their primary means to search and move data across these different storage tiers.

Whether companies realize it or not, they are making decisions about how their companies' information will be managed and accessed short and long term every day. Whether it is through the selection of backup appliance that does deduplication; backup software that controls what data is backed up and when; or archiving software that controls how long data is kept and who has the rights to access it; these are all examples of day-to-day decisions that impact the larger corporate picture of how easy, or difficult, it is for companies to manage and access their information enterprise wide.

CommVault Systems in particular has some very definite opinions that pressure is building for a transformation in how corporate information is accessed and managed. I recently spoke with Simon Taylor, CommVault Systems' Senior Director of Information Access and Management, about this topic in terms of how CommVault is meeting corporate information access and management needs now and how he sees this changing in the future.

In this role, Taylor manages a team that has members in Australia, EMEA and the US. The purpose of this group is to architect the CommVault® Simpana® software suite so it can continue to adapt to growing corporate data stores and control access to the information once it is put into its data store.

Jerome: Simon, you are responsible for managing a product that sounds very familiar to Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) that has fallen out of favor in the last few years. Can you elaborate?

Simon: ILM is a phrase that got overused in the US but it is still a phrase that describes a problem that companies are trying to address. In the US, CommVault still talks about it though we just use a different metaphor to describe it. In Europe and the Middle East, ILM is still very much alive as it does not carry the same negative connotation that it does here in the US. In these regions of the world, CommVault is still actively engaged in conversations around ILM.

Jerome: Archiving is a major component of ILM and I noticed that CommVault has a number of products specifically designed for Archiving including File & NAS, Exchange, SharePoint, Lotus Domino and CAS. Why these particular products and are you seeing any demand for archiving in any other space?

Simon: Archiving as a market is changing all of the time though at CommVault we feel we have done a good job in remaining current on these topics. In the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant, CommVault moved further to the up and right than any other archiving vendor which CommVault believes reflects the good breadth of Simpana's capability.

In terms of the products CommVault offers, email is still important but CommVault is encountering more opportunities in the areas of file and SharePoint archiving. In many cases, these opportunities are arising because of the cohesion CommVault has with Microsoft. An example of the strength of that relationship with Microsoft is found in how CommVault can recover just individual files in SharePoint as opposed to first needing to recover the entire database to access and recover a single file.

That relationship was only heightened by Microsoft's recent acquisition of FAST Index and Search. FAST is the search engine that CommVault uses to search all the archive and backup data it manages. This is created at the same time data is single instanced at the object (file, document & attachment) level through its Single Instance Store (SIS). Simpana creates a content index across over 400 different files so it does not matter what you are searching for, FAST can find it, including across 77 different languages.

Jerome: Notably absent from this list of archive products are any products that perform database archiving. Can you explain where CommVault is on support for database archiving?

Simon: The jury is still out on the best way to do database archiving. Whenever you move data out of a database, you have to preserve all of the links and the meta model. This becomes very difficult to do once the data is outside of the main database. Since data can be added, deleted and changed, links can become broken or impossible to rebuild in the future to reflect these changes. Today CommVault does not have a specific solution for database archiving. Instead CommVault chooses to partner with niche vendors in this area, and at the same time constantly evaluates the best and most seamless methods of archiving data stored in a database as the requirement for it evolves. For now, often the best way is to create a smaller database.

In part 3 in this 3-part interview series, Simon discusses emerging challenges with Information Access and how evolving laws in the US and internationally are presenting new challenges as to how archived data is managed, searched and retained.

Known as single instance store (SIS), file-based deduplication can also reduce the massive amounts of data found in today's storage environments in much the same way that block-based deduplication does. However there are subtle but important differences in how these two deduplication methods work that will influence a company's decision as to which is best for them.

Deduplication generally provides the greatest levels of data reduction. If reduction in backup data stores is a company's sole objective, block-based deduplication generally does this better than SIS. Block-based deduplication analyzes data in backup streams, breaks these streams up into smaller chunks of data and then compares these chunks of data from the backup streams with existing chunks of data to determine if they are a match. If the block-based deduplication algorithm encounters chunks that are the same as existing chunks, it creates indexes and pointers to these chunks of data and discards the duplicate chunk of data.

The trouble with using block-based deduplication for data reduction is that it ends up functioning as a band aid or quick fix to the company's backup problems and may not address all of the concerns that a company has around managing archived and backup data. Deduplication is typically introduced as part of a backup appliance and presented to existing archiving and backup software as either a file server or a virtual tape library (VTL). Though it enables a company to archive or backup data to disk and reduces its storage requirements and backup times, block-based deduplication can end up creating a data silo on vendor specific storage devices.

Using CommVault's SIS, it provides a method to compliment, or even replace, block-based deduplication solutions found on backup appliances. CommVault incorporates SIS across its Simpana software suite and more specifically in its data protection software module.

While SIS does not break up a file into chunks and store the file in chunks as block-based deduplication does, during backups its backup software module uses SIS to compare files against previously backed up files. When it does encounter a duplicate file, it indexes it and creates pointers within the index back to the original file but does not back up the duplicate file again. In this way, SIS works in a manner similar to block-based deduplication as it only stores one unique copy of each file and puts SIS on par with block-based deduplication in term of backup speeds.

The advantages that SIS offers most clearly show up when it comes time to perform restores. A key problem with block-based deduplication is it creates fragmented data sets as it deduplicates the data. Storing single chunks of data drives up compression ratios as companies take a performance and time hit when they go to recover this chunked up data.

Depending on the amount of data they need to recover, it could take tens or even hundreds of hours to reassemble this data which eliminates one of the primary benefits of using disk - faster restores. SIS negates this typical downside of block-based deduplication since SIS stores all of the blocks of the files together negating the need to reassemble them. So while SIS may only deliver 80% of the reduction benefits during backup that block-based deduplication provides, SIS will continue to deliver the full benefits that one expects from disk during recoveries.

Including SIS in backup software also frees companies to use any vendor's disk, whether it is raw disk, a VTL or a network filer. This option opens up new possibilities for tiered storage management that deduplication can not offer on its own. For instance, companies can store data on multiple tiers of disk from high performance Fibre Channel or SAS drives to slower performing Serial ATA disk drives.

Companies have a lot of choices when it comes to deduplication and with all of the hoopla around "inline" versus "post-processing", it is easy to allow this debate to take your eye off the ball in regards to the more fundamental questions that companies should be asking. Block-based deduplication found on backup appliances address immediate corporate concerns in regards to minimizing data stores on disk and shortening backup windows. However when it comes to expediting recoveries when using any vendor's disk, CommVault SIS provides companies with a compelling reason to look at as an alternative to using only block-based deduplication.

It was with those thoughts and questions in mind that I went into a conversation with CommVault's Product Manager of Enterprise Reporting, Eric Harless, to discuss the updated version of CommVault Storage Manager 7.0 that came out this week. It's purpose: Help users adopt a proactive approach to tracking and analyzing storage information. Harless is responsible for the development of Storage Manager, the SRM software component of the CommVault® Simpana® software suite, and helps to navigate and define what CommVault Storage Manager is in the notoriously nebulous world of SRM.

As part of the conversation, Harless clarified what specific problems that Storage Manager will help users resolve. Rather than try to produce SRM software that is all things to all administrators across an organization, Harless said that CommVault made a conscious effort in its design of Storage Manager to manage data at the file level and not to try to manage SANs or SAN-attached volumes.

Though Storage Manager understands which host volumes are SAN disks by looking at volume serial numbers, Harless says it does not try to create zones on FC switches or provision LUNs on storage systems as some other SRM software does. "CommVault has found that customers often obtain this type of SRM software from their storage hardware provider and do not look to us to provide this functionality," say Harless.

Instead, CommVault's clients look to Storage Manager to provide file level information across a spectrum of operating systems (Linux, Windows, UNIX), as well as insight into applications such as Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint or databases such as Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle. It also provides some detail on server backups by identifying if servers are being backed, if backups are completing successfully and how they are being backed up (differentials, incrementals or fulls).

The evolution that Harless sees occurring within SRM software in general, and CommVault Storage Manager specifically, is moving beyond just looking for information but actually doing something about it. It is not uncommon for Storage Manager to discover that 90% of the data on file systems is over a year old which is part of the reason CommVault added new NAS reporting capabilities for the EMC Celerra and the latest NetApp (ONTAP) storage systems in this latest upgrade. The new objective among its Storage Manager customers is not just about cleaning up this mess but ensuring it does not recur again.

This new customer mindset results in SRM projects turning into archiving projects. This plays very well into CommVault's strengths since both its Archive and Storage Manager modules share the same underlying common technology engine (CTE) that are part of CommVault's broader Simpana software platform. In this way, data collected by one module can be used by the other, thereby facilitating the creation of a common interface for policy creation, administration and enforcement.

SRM software will continue to face an uphill climb in those organizations that position the technology as a point solution without any roadmap towards solving the larger data management issues that they face. CommVault Storage Manager changes that dynamic. Though it can be implemented as a point product, customers will reap its larger value when they implement it first as a way to quantify what they have and then use that information to optimize their environment. Using Storage Manager's integration with the broader CommVault Simpana software suite, companies can use it to lay the foundation for a better way to do data and information management in the future.

I recently had the chance to speak with Mr. Muller about a number of patents that were granted to CommVault Systems by the U.S. Patents and Trademark Office. The focus of our conversation was on the significance of these recently granted patents as well as what CommVault's numerous patent filings and awards mean to its customers short and long term.

Patents tend to provide intangible as well as tangible benefits to its existing and future customers. The filing and granting of patents provide customers with an intangible sense of assurance that CommVault is prepared to address issues that are forecast to emerge in the not-too-distant future. In a tangible sense, patents provide proof that CommVault is continuing to innovate and develop its core Simpana software suite for tomorrow's data center information management problems.

CommVault already has a documented history of doing this. Back in early 2001, CommVault filed for a number of patents related to the management of data changing over time. These patents have since become part of the core technology found in CommVault®'s Simpana software suite. Now, in 2008, this underlying architecture and these inventions have been extended enabling CommVault to deliver enterprise-wide data protection, archive, replication, and search to its customers across all tiers of storage.

One of the reasons that Muller views CommVault as having the ability to file so many patents for a company its size is that the underlying architecture for its Simpana software suites is fairly unique. CommVault developed its Simpana software suite in-house which, from the beginning, was designed as a tightly integrated suite. This tight integration leads to innovation and new possibilities that CommVault seeks to protect through the filing of patents.

Muller also feels this tight integration puts many of its competitors working with multiple point products at a distinct disadvantage. "Competitors are trying to cobble together a bunch of point products to produce a unified product," says Muller.

The integration found between the products in the Simpana software suite enables it to perform certain tasks that its competitors cannot. For instance, CommVault Simpana shares a common technology engine (CTE) between its archive, backup, e-discovery and storage resource management (SRM) software.

Using the CTE, administrators can set policies that span directories, volumes and systems to collect information and apply business policies for data archiving, data protection, data retention and disaster recovery. By filing and being granted patents that protect this type of functionality, it not only documents CommVault's thought leadership in this space but it gives CommVault the proof it needs to defend itself should a competitor try to copy Simpana's underlying technology.

Given the long-term nature of the patent process which can span many years, the inherent value of recently filed and awarded patents is not always immediately reflected in the current release of CommVault's Simpana software suite. However customers that are looking to the future should find assurance in the eleven new patents that CommVault was granted in the past year plus the 130+ other patents that it has on file with the U.S. Patents office.

These granted patents plus the numerous other patents on file provide proof that CommVault will continue to evolve. Even as it has used past patents to transform itself into the information management company that it is today, the patents that it is filing today should give its customers the assurance that it will continue to evolve. For even as CommVault took steps in the past to transform itself into the information management company that it is now, currently filed and awarded patents prove it is again taking the steps to transform Simpana into the type of product that its customers will need in the future.

Barry was recently put in the situation where he began to doubt that his data protection software was providing the level of protection that Blessing Hospital needed in order to recover its data. So before anything seriously bad happened to its data, he felt that a change in data protection software was required. However as he started to evaluate contending enterprise data protection software products, he could not ascertain which one was best suited for Blessing Hospital so he decided to bring in each of the contending products and test them.

When testing the products, he essentially put them through what he described as a drag race. Each product was loaded on the same server hardware and had to back up the same amount of data to disk. However what made Blessing Hospital's data unique is that it used a PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) system to create and manage its imaging files. The PACS system creates a large number of files that only change infrequently but need to be kept online for ready access to meet specific HIPAA regulations.

A particular vexing problem he ran across when backing up files on the PACS system is that periodically the PACS management database would touch a large number of files. Though none of the content in any of the files would change, the PACS system would in some way change permissions on the files. What he discovered in his testing is that the different backup software packages would interpret these changed file permissions differently. Some products would conclude that the files had changed and needed to be backed up again. This would dramatically increase backup times and the amount of data backed up.

What Barry specifically found noteworthy was how much the different backup software products differed in how they performed the file scan. In most cases, the larger the server, the larger the file system it had; the larger the file system, the longer it took to scan. In this aspect, the CommVault® Simpana® software suite distanced itself from the competitors in his environment. "The scan up front is where the magic is," says Barry.

Barry came to understand that CommVault's Simpana software is so effective in scanning files during backups because of how its intelligent agents interact with CommVault's underlying Single Instance Store (SIS) database. Its intelligent agents don't just look at a file's permissions but at the file's make-up. As the agent scans the file, if it determines the file permissions have changed but the file has not, CommVault knows it does not need to backup the file again. This, says Barry, resulted in backup times that were about half of what he achieved using Symanctec's Backup Exec.

Barry said the choice eventually came down to EMC Networker and the CommVault Simpana Suite. Even though he considers Blessing Hospital an EMC shop and has a lot of respect for EMC, he chose CommVault. Since his implementation of CommVault software, he finds that he has reduced the total amount of storage he stores on the back-end as well as the time it takes to do backups.

Equally important is what Barry said as I was finishing up my call with him. While single instance stores and reduced backup times are great, data restoration is where the rubber meets the road. In this respect, he has seen restore times decrease from an hour to 15 - 20 minutes.

Barry's methodical approach to selecting the appropriate data protection product for Blessing Hospital deserves some accolades and not only because he choose the CommVault Simpana software. No matter how much is written about a product or how many case studies one reads, one never really knows for sure (even the vendor) until you put the product through the paces in your environment. As Barry found out, SIS was a feature that he may never have thought to look for in the literature or ask of the vendor, but through testing it ended up being the feature that separated the CommVault Simpana software from the pack.

Those companies using CommVault Systems' Simpana® Software Suite are better positioned than most to address these needs. CommVault® Simpana software addresses specific needs because of inherent features like its Single Instance Store, underlying integration with the Microsoft/FAST search engine and intelligent agents that index data as it is stored. However every product has its limitations when it comes to accessing, indexing and searching backup data created by other enterprise data protection software products and CommVault's Simpana Suite is no exception.

Yet, this is the situation in which some of its customers who have recently switched from other data protection products to CommVault occasionally find themselves - up the proverbial creek without a paddle. These customers may need to access, search and index backup data created prior to when they implemented CommVault Simpana software. Finding themselves in a position where they need to adopt extreme measures to respond to legal discoveries and produce the requested data, some customers have even had to go so far as to build out an entirely new backup environment so they could first recover the data from tape to disk so the data could be searched.

It is resolving these types of costly and time-consuming episodes that makes today's announcement about the pairing between CommVault and Index Engines significant. CommVault recognizes that accessing and reading data stored by competitive data protection products is not its core competency today. However, CommVault also recognized that a growing number of its clients have a pressing need to access this largely inaccessible information and require a more cost-effective, less painful way to do so.

I spoke to Robert Brower, CommVault's Director of Professional Services, about what sorts of benefits this alliance will provide to CommVault clients. Brower explained that in the immediate short term it gives current CommVault clients the flexibility to extract data from their existing tapes without the need to rebuild entire backup environments. Using CommVault's professional services, customers can send these tapes offsite to CommVault. At CommVault's New Jersey facility, CommVault uses an Index Engines appliance to extract all or just specified backup data or objects from the tapes. Then using CommVault, they import this data and provide it back to the client so they can manage it going forward.

Longer term the ramifications are equally significant. Some users may want to extract all of the data on all of their tapes and convert it into a format that is accessible, indexed and searchable by CommVault. In these cases, users can either outsource these tapes to CommVault's professional services or they can, if they have the time and resources, buy an Index Engines appliance and perform this task themselves.

Users can also use the combination of CommVault and Index Engines products to reduce the number of tapes under management. Brower encountered one customer that had thousands of LTO-1 tapes that they wanted to index, access and search, but long term use CommVault to manage the data on higher capacity tapes. Brower says, "Together CommVault Systems and Index Engines can reduce thousands of LTO-1 tapes to hundreds of LTO-4 tapes."

Some alliances in the storage industry just make sense and this is one of them. This alliance between CommVault and Index Engines gives companies a new mechanism in which to immediately access, search and index data regardless of which data protection software they used in the past. Together CommVault and Index Engines give companies a powerful new option to solve their immediate electronic data discovery needs while providing companies a roadmap for standardizing the management of all of their backup data under CommVault's Simpana data and information management umbrella.

Using Oracle's Recovery Manager (RMAN) to perform database backups is not a new concept as other backup software products support the execution of RMAN scripts. The inherent problem with simply executing RMAN scripts is that this puts the onus on Oracle DBAs to write and test the RMAN scripts prior to the backup software executing them.

Ms. DeNovio tells me that it is not uncommon for enterprise companies to have one or more Oracle DBAs dedicated to creating and managing RMAN scripts. Part of the reason this turns into a time consuming task is that as Oracle releases new versions of its database, the RMAN scripts need to be modified to include the new and improved RMAN features.

To take advantage of these APIs, the Oracle DBAs need to first understand what new features the new version of Oracle RMAN includes, how these are applicable to their environment, adapt their existing RMAN scripts to use them, test them and then implement them. This education and testing process can also result in slowing down needed Oracle upgrades as Oracle DBAs first need to write and test these new scripts with the new version of the Oracle database before it can be upgraded.

CommVault Simpana software automates the generation of Oracle RMAN scripts. It detects the version of the Oracle database in use, it generates the appropriate RMAN scripts needed to support it. In so doing, it minimizes or eliminates the need for Oracle DBAs to write and manage these scripts themselves.

Despite its ability to do this, CommVault still encounters a healthy dose of skepticism from DBAs who are considering using this feature. The fact that CommVault Simpana software generates Oracle RMAN scripts that are used to protect mission critical databases only adds to their skepticism. In these circumstances where CommVault first needs to convince the DBAs, Oracle DBAs can still write their own scripts or use scripts they have already created since the CommVault Simpana software provides a means to schedule and manage these scripts.

That does not mean CommVault has not gained some converts. I spoke to one user who had recently switched from another backup software product to CommVault Simpana software. The major reasons his company decided to switch to Simpana software for its Oracle backups were: It could support existing RMAN scripts; It could automate the generation of new scripts; and, It improved backup success rates. The management and automation of the RMAN scripts saved his company's DBAs precious hours every week in management while using RMAN in lieu of multiplexing increased their weekly success rate from the high 80's to 99%.

Ms. DeNovio describes the inclusion of RMAN APIs within Oracle as creating a level playing field between backup software vendors. RMAN minimizes or eliminates the need for DBAs to rely upon proprietary backup techniques while providing them with both faster backup and recovery capabilities. What RMAN does not provide is a simple method to generate and manage scripts. Since CommVault Simpana software now takes on this task, it provides CommVault with a distinct advantage in Oracle database protection against which all other enterprise backup software platforms should now be measured.

Despite these advances, support for these new Oracle features is not so clearly evidenced in backup software designed to support Oracle. Two major deficiencies found in backup software is its heavy reliance upon multiplexing to backup Oracle databases and its inability to use more than one node in an Oracle RAC Environment to backup the Oracle database.

Recently I had the opportunity to discuss these specific challenges that backup and recovery software is facing with CommVault's Database Practice Manager, Audrey DeNovio, and how the CommVault® Simpana® product deals with them.

Ms. DeNovio says that in customer environments, when it comes to backing up and recovering Oracle databases, it always comes down to performance. Many companies still backup their large Oracle databases (500 GB+) to tape because so much disk is required for these backups. This puts backup software under the gun to stream data to a tape drive fast enough to complete the database backup within the application backup window.

To accomplish this, most backup software resorts to combining, or multiplexing, the backup streams in order to keep the data flow consistent and fast enough to satisfy these requirements. Using multiplexing, backup software would combine the data streams of 2, 3 or more backup streams from different Oracle backups into one. On the tape, the data from the various data streams is then interleaved.

The downside of this is that recovery times are increased by about the same multiple as the number of data streams that the backup software combines. To get to the data for one Oracle client, the backup software would need to sequentially read through all of the data for all the clients interleaved together on the same tape. So in a case where three backup streams are multiplexed into one data stream, recovery times are multiplied by about a factor of three.

To address this, CommVault took an important step in differentiating how CommVault Simpana protects Oracle databases from other backup and software products. Though the Simpana suite also supports multiplexing, the underlying Simpana architecture works more efficiently to handle data and avoid the need to multiplex at all - and still keep the tape devices spinning as fast as possible. The secret sauce in this is the architecture of the Simpana Media Agent and its efficiency in managing data from RMAN to the tape device. Using a single backup data stream, Simpana can recover data from tape as fast as it can back it up.

Yet how CommVault Simpana integrates with Oracle's RMAN APIs goes beyond just calling RMAN's APIs; it also automates the generation and management of RMAN scripts as well as takes advantage of processing of situations where clustered servers are present. What and how CommVault Simpana software does this will be examined in part 2 of this series.

Q: I understand that early on, CommVault architecture was based on Solaris and then you switched it to Windows. Why did you make that switch?

Randy: There are two answers here: First, in the mid-to-late 1990's, a majority of CommVault's business was from the "PC" side of the world - like Microsoft, Banyan, and Novell. As Exchange became more popular, it became easy to see that a lot of our selling cycles were spent on educating the Exchange administrators as to why they needed a UNIX server for data management - not an easy task. We learned we could shorten the selling cycle and improve the business model by providing the same great functionality on a Windows server in software-only sale.

The second answer, and part of the secret sauce, is we learned that CommVault hit a strategic area for Microsoft back in 1998 - heterogeneous data management. Simply put, Microsoft didn't like UNIX managing its data. Making matters exponentially easier was the fact that I worked for years with a key decision maker and visionary at Microsoft in charge of all Windows products, Jim Allchin. We sat down, discussed where CommVault could go, what Microsoft could benefit from and, a few months later, Microsoft became a significant equity investor in CommVault. Working with Allchin became a significant bonus for me and a few others here at CommVault. Jim turned us on to Brian Valentine (Big-Chief Windows guru) who helped mentor our entrance into the Microsoft market segment and the rest is history (well, save maybe some of the videos and stuff that went on in hockey locker rooms).

Q. Are you happy that you made the switch to Windows? Has the choice helped or hurt CommVault's business, overall?

Randy: Looking back, Microsoft helped put CommVault on the map. Microsoft educated us in many ways beyond the standard developer/API questions. They taught (and I mean taught) us the proper marketing events to sponsor and where their customers needed assistance in rolling out their solutions. Back then, we aggressively sought out that market segment and were smart enough to put good people behind the efforts that bore a lot of revenue, awareness and customers.

Q: What about the naysayers - IT organizations that would never welcome having a Windows system in their environment? What do you say to them?

Randy: I think there are two groups of naysayers. The first is our competition, most of which uses UNIX or Linux as the foundation for their solutions. The second are the hardcore UNIX and Linux administrators. Microsoft showed us early in 1999 what the capabilities of Windows 2000 were going to be and we realized that Windows Server could handle the large scale of data we were going to manage. If any prospect questions Windows, it's very easy for us to have Microsoft educate them on the capabilities that the Windows Server foundation provides for CommVault to run and develop on.

As for our competitors, I would imagine our rapidly growing market share answers some of their questions immediately.

You may contact Randy directly at rdemeno@commvault.com.

Q. When you speak to your customers, what do you think that they appreciate most about the CommVault Microsoft relationship? What is the most tangible benefit that you think they see?

Randy: I hope the first thing they appreciate is we're speaking the same language, one that enhances and embraces the Microsoft operating system and applications. After that, I hope they realize our development teams are in close communication which is a key reason why CommVault is so often a launch partner for major Microsoft releases - like Windows 2000, Server 2003, Server 2008, 64-bit computing, Exchange 2000, 2003 and Exchange Server 2007, SharePoint, and so forth. We get involved with their early adopters and often it is their early adopters who give us suggestions for our solutions.

Q. How do you think that the market will accept a Windows server platform OEM'ed by Sun from Microsoft?

Randy: Once a customer looks at the capabilities and price-for-performance of the 64-bit Sun hardware, I think they'll forget about the brand. Customers will see the power of the combined solution, examining the overall performance of the solution and the functionality. It's a great fit of computing power with Windows software capability. It's going to surprise some people.

On a lighter note, if I was a long-time customer, it might be fun just to ask a representative from Sun to have a Microsoft representative join them on a sales call or vice versa. It was fun to watch the surprise in the Sun and Microsoft sales teams as the launch of Sun's OEM of Windows Server began. Get out the cameras and try to catch a Sun rep with a Microsoft logoed shirt or a Microsoft technical specialist with a Sun logo.

Q. What are the tangible customer benefits that you anticipate from the OEM of both CommVault and Microsoft technology, by Sun?

Randy: For over a decade Sun has had an overwhelming positive worldwide reputation for products, support and service among the Fortune-5000, scientific and large government environments. Sun will help spread the news about the great CommVault features and capabilities in our software. One simple example is the 26-city North American CommVault/Microsoft/Sun seminar series we are in the middle of. CommVault has presented to Sun's Data Management Ambassador group in an effort to prepare them to evangelize the CommVault features. One unique surprise could be what CommVault and Sun are working on for TechEd 2008. Sun is in a unique position to deliver the "1 Stop Shop" combined solution anywhere in the world and through their vast resellers.

Customers should also realize that Sun is a technical company first and it was their evaluation of CommVault's product that accelerated their move to resell CommVault.

Q. What's on the horizon for Microsoft technology? What exciting new developments affecting data storage management can we anticipate for 2008?

Randy: CommVault can't be in a position to specifically talk about a partner's future products. However, if I were on the outside looking in I would keep my eye on a few key technology areas. First, I'd keep an eye on search. Searching for data, based on content, is the new "paradigm." Now that CommVault is embedding the FAST indexing engine - yet another piece of Microsoft technology - it will be interesting to see how that is going to play strategically in the future. I'd also pay attention to the Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 new releases from Microsoft this year.

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

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.