Aggressive strategy the key for CommVault

With the amount of data in the world growing by an estimated 40% year on year, it would be easy to think that the data management sector is one where providers simply sit back and watch the money roll in.

However, Al Bunte, chief operating officer of CommVault, says a big part of the company’s success is its aggressive approach to its technology.

"We don’t assume we can keep doing what we do forever,” Bunte says.

"We have to keep working hard, keep expanding our market opportunities.”

Bunte admits there aren’t many start ups in the data management space.

"It’s taken us ten or eleven years to build this, it’s millions of lines of code... so it’s somewhat prohibitive... it’ll take a number of years for someone else to do.

"However, we always run the business assuming someone’s going to do it tomorrow.”

The strategy is paying off, with the company recording a healthy 30% software revenue growth year-on-year worldwide for the quarter ended September 30, something it’s achieved for the last few quarters.

Although CommVault’s policy doesn’t allow for regional breakdowns, Bunte says New Zealand is one of the company’s top divisions, as well as being an indicator of future trends.

"It’s a place where I like to understand what they’re thinking.”

The challenge that comes with the aggressive development strategy is keeping customers, and even staff, up to date with new capabilities, Bunte says.

"With the volume of features and capabilities coming through, you need a good training programme to keep people up to date.”

As for the future, Bunte predicts the mobile and social network spaces will be big growth areas for communication in business, and it will be up to managers to decide how to manage those.

"You can only talk on the phone and have meetings with so many people. [Social networks] are going to completely change the way people communicate.”