CommVault Enlists NetApp to Build Data Protection Appliance

Every once in a while two major IT vendors will come together in a way that uniquely benefits the channel. CommVault announced this week that it has partnered with NetApp to create a backup and recovery appliance that will be manufactured by distributors and sold through the channel.

The two vendors have selected Avnet (AVT) and Arrow (ARW) to manufacture an appliance that will be sold only through channel partners of both CommVault and NetApp (NTAP). Although CommVault has been selling backup and recovery software for years, the company has never sold an appliance that was branded under its name. NetApp, meanwhile, is a force to be reckoned with in disk-based storage systems, but it has never applied much focus on data protection.

Greg Bennett, director of Product Marketing for CommVault, said both companies have a lot of overlap in their channel base, so it makes sense for them to develop a backup and recovery appliance that will be sold by partners that have dual citizenship in both vendors’ channel programs. The actual appliances will be sold under the logos of both CommVault and NetApp and represents an extension of an existing relationship through which the two companies jointly developed NetApp SnapProtect, an array-based snapshot management offering that runs on NetApp storage systems.

Interest in backup and recovery appliances has remained high because many IT organizations want to offload the management of backup and recovery from their servers to a dedicated appliance. When it comes to data protection obviously there has been a lot of interest in all things cloud. But from a practical perspective most organizations still want a local backup and recovery capability simply because recovering files over a wide area network (WAN) can be both time-consuming and expensive. Instead, most organizations are replicating archived data that is rarely accessed into the cloud, where it is much less expensive to store.

Arguably, the lack of an appliance option has been a limitation for CommVault and its partners. In fact, the alliance with NetApp creates an opportunity for partners of both companies to cede less of the data protection marketplace to rivals.

In the meantime, solution providers looking to sell unique products might want to take note of both Avnet and Arrow, which increasingly seem willing to exercise their manufacturing prowess to create unique products for the channel that won’t be available anywhere else.