CommVault is readying a major release of its Simpana software, adding object storage and enhancing deduplication.

Simpana, currently at version 8, is CommVault's data protection and management software suite that provides backup, recovery, archiving, replication, resource management and search facilities. The next version is expected in the summer and could include source and target deduplication and improved scalability as well as improvements in the search and e-Discovery areas.

CommVault is also going to add object-based storage, snapshot-based archiving and data movement, and it will improve its cloud storage access facilities. It will also add the ability to manage third-party protection environments such as Symantec NetBackup and NetApp snaps with EMC's NetWorker being added later.

Simpana is becoming a generalised data management suite, moving up the storage stack and so trying to separate itself from the run-of-the-mill backup vendors. All the software functions in Simpana are layered on a central engine and it reads and writes data from heterogeneous storage hardware.

CommVault is going to move into another area of functionality. Stifel analyst Aaaron Rakers says it will be an "Adjacent market opportunity" and be based on "integrated functionality within its Common Engine product architecture". He thinks the new area is outside the data and information management markets and suggests it will be concerned somehow with converged platforms in enterprise data centres.

Are we looking at the monitoring and management of components in integrated software-hardware IT stacks such as those from Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM, etc?

CommVault's CEO, Robert Hammer, told Rakers that CommVault would have to start thinking about making acquisitions at some point. ®