CommVault Crawls Into Compliance

As regulators begin clamping down on companies for not complying with rules governing the storage and archiving of emails, the storage industry is brimming with vendors eager to offer their assistance.

Storage software vendor CommVault Systems Inc. is the latest player to the table. As the Oceanport, N.J., company prepares to announce enhancements across its entire QiNetix software platform next week, it will also be throwing a new product for email compliance into the mix.

CommVault says it will start shipping both its enhanced platform and its new QiNetix DataArchiver software next month. The new software product is aimed specifically at keeping email on Microsoft Corp.'s (Nasdaq: MSFT) Exchange Server compliant with the slew of new and beefed-up laws and regulations that have recently been lobbed at a variety of different industries. CommVault says the software also works with all versions of Microsoft Exchange, including the new Exchange Server 2003, which was launched today (see Vendors Support MS Exchange 2003). CommVault says it will cost approximately $50 per mailbox.

DataArchiver provides very unique capabilities,” says Chris Van Wagoner, CommVault’s director of product marketing. “It’s perfect for long-term, fixed-content record retention.”

The software integrates with tamper-proof compliance media for retaining any emails that are subject to regulations or vulnerable to discovery in the case of litigation, Van Wagoner says.DataArchiver tucks away the emails and attachments with redundant data protection and distributed indexing, CommVault says, claiming that the approach offers unmatched scaleability. The software also provides authorized users with audit, search, and discovery capabilities, allowing them to browse and access the messages and attachments to ensure that they are compliant and not harmful to the company. This function includes so-called lifecycle controls, which ensure that emails are retained for the appropriate amount of time and then destroyed.

The question, of course, is how CommVault’s new software will fare in a market already teaming with products aimed at easing companies’ regulatory pressures. A number of other storage software and hardware vendors, including big shots like Legato Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: LGTO) and Storage Technology Corp. (StorageTek) (NYSE: STK), are already offering many of the very same functions as DataArchiver.

But John Webster, senior analyst with Data Mobility Group, says that CommVault’s new compliant software offering appears to be comprehensive. “It seems like this covers a number of bases, and at a reasonable price,” he says, adding that the software not only addresses regulatory problems, but also the huge expenses of digging up emails for litigation. “Have you heard the joke that the 'e' in email actually stands for 'evidence'?"

But while the software itself may be fairly inexpensive, Webster cautions that compliance can’t be achieved through software alone.

“There’s the hardware, and putting all the solutions together,” he says, pointing out that companies also still have to figure out what policies they are required to put in place. “Until now, complete compliance solutions have often been so tremendously expensive that I’ve heard serious talk of companies going private, at least for the time being, to get around this problem.”In addition to introducing its new DataArchiver software next week, CommVault is also expected to announce new versions of two of its existing software products: QiNetix DataMigrator 5.0, which allows companies to migrate fixed content files to less expensive, secondary storage; and QiNetix Quick Recovery 5.0, which manages snapshot technology like EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) SnapView 2.0 and Microsoft Virtual Shadow Service (VSS). The new versions will, among other things, offer extended platform support and improved performance. All of the products, including DataArchiver, will integrate with the QiNetix Common Technology Engine, CommVault says.

— Eugénie Larson, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch