CommVault Integrates Backup and Recovery with the Cloud

According to CommVault director of business development Jeff Echols, each of the major cloud computing services that offer backup and recovery services employ a slightly different version of a REST style interface. Rather than asking each customer to find a connector for that service, CommVault is bundling the required connector within its Simpana software.

The CommVault offering follows on the heels of a similar offering from Asigra, which recently connnected its managed service for backup and recovery to a variety of cloud computing offerings. In contrast, the CommVault offering is designed to integrate an enteprise directly with a cloud computing service.

Echols said that in an ideal world there would be a standard set of interfaces for these cloud computing services. But in the absence of such standards, CommVault has developed the connector, called the CommVault Simpana Integrated Cloud Connector, to integrate its offering with cloud computing services from Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure and Nirvanix SDN. Company officials add that integration with EMC and Iron Mountain services is also planned.

CommVault recently published a survey of 535 IT managers that found 43 percent expect to store between 6-75 TBs of data in the cloud. Almost half IT managers surveyed also said they move between 6-75 TBs of storage to tape/month for offsite vaulting. Once data is moved to the cloud, they survey found that 24 percent of respondents plan to retain it for more than six years, while 8 percent said they expected to keep data for more than 10 years. Of the IT managers planning to use the cloud, 31 percent expect to dedicate between 1.6 and 30 Mb/s of network bandwidth for accessing cloud storage, while 15 percent project dedicating between 31 and 130 Mb/s of bandwidth.

Regardless of their level of commitment to using a cloud computing service, however, more than 75 percent of the IT managers surveyed said they had reservations about cloud computing tied to security, reliability, cost and scalability.