CommVault Crawls Into Compliance: Page 2 of 3

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.”