Commvault GO: Commvault Enhanced Activate Data Insights and Governance Solution

Commvault Systems, Inc. announced product and experience enhancements to Activate, its data insights and governance solution.

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It gives customers visibility into their data, identifies opportunities for storage efficiencies, and manages risk. Enhancements include the addition of file access controls for File Storage Optimization and new redaction functions with Sensitive Data Governance.

Additionally, the company introduced a flexible licensing scheme. While the entire Activate suite continues to be available on a per user basis, organizations can purchase the company Activate’s capabilities – File Storage Optimization, Sensitive Data Governance and eDiscovery — on either a per terabyte basis (for use with file and VM data) or a per user basis (for use with email or Microsoft Office 365 data). The Activate licenses can then be expanded as customer needs evolve.

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“Enterprises today need to be ready to take on complex data governance, compliance and storage optimization challenges if they want to avoid heavy government data privacy fines, reduce unnecessary IT costs, and build customer trust,” said Ranga Rajagopalan, VP, product management, Commvault. “Over the past year, Commvault Activate has empowered our customers to analyze their data and use that insight to drive optimization of their unstructured data, reduce risks associated with their sensitive data, and enhance their data governance stance. Today, we build on this success, with more data governance capabilities, a simpler user experience and new pricing packages, to make it even easier for customers to use Commvault Activate to transform their data risks into data rewards.“

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The company also introduced Entitlement Management to the Activate File Storage Optimization offering, enabling customers to control their critical or sensitive data, and to apply changes necessary to lock down file access. The user experience for File Storage Optimization has been streamlined by consolidating the dashboards into the Commvault Command Center for management and reporting. As a result, users can access the various views when reviewing storage distribution and identify duplicated or orphan files for clients or client-groups.

Sensitive Data Governance
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Redaction is available when exporting files using Activate Sensitive Data Governance. For those who respond to GDPR Right-to-Access and other similar requirements, the export function will optionally redact sensitive data entities found within the files or emails.

“Commvault Activate has already produced a significant reduction in cost, risk, storage, and complexity by processing eDiscovery and legal holds for our business,” said Jeff Pelot, CIO, Denver Health. “We are actively engaged in our own efforts to drive storage efficiencies and to deal with the governance issues that come along with highly regulated personal and health information. It’s good to see Activate’s portfolio of solutions addressing these challenges.“

“Commvault Activate currently powers all our archiving and indexing functions and enables us to perform keyword searches and content analyses across more than 30 million files,” said Jundong Xia, senior manager, IT platform, Yantai Shinho Food Co., Ltd. “As a result, we have been able to maximize the value of our data to manage risk and support business growth. We look forward to exploring the new innovations announced to give us even greater visibility and insight from our data, while optimizing storage backups and increasing governance.“

“I’ve managed our eDiscovery processes for years with Commvault Activate and have seen the value it has brought to our organization in accelerating responses to legal hold requests and meeting compliance-related demands,” said Barry Hubbard, director, infrastructure, architecture and engineering, Envision Healthcare. “As we look to the future, I can see the significant value in using Activate to help us address new and ever-changing data privacy regulations, and to provide visibility into data impacted by our infrastructure modernization plans. New features including access control management and redaction for exported files could be key for us to minimize information risks.“

The flexible pricing options will be available to customers in early-November and through the partners.

“We’re particularly excited about the new licensing and pricing model, which will make Activate easier to buy – and for us as a partner – easier to sell,” said Vincent Chang, president, Arrosoft Solutions. “Since its launch last year, we have seen many of our customers benefit from Commvault Activate’s ability to help them gain insight on their information’s risk and value. These changes will make Commvault Activate more attractive to our customers who are interested in the solution for file storage optimization, sensitive data governance or eDiscovery use cases.“

“A huge majority of our customers’ requirements are around the optimization of backup data while – responsibly – extracting greater business value or insights from those data management investments,” said Damon Roberston, MD, CoolSPRiT, Ltd. “Commvault Activate enables us to deliver on these requirements. The breadth of Activate’s full capabilities mean we are always able to explore new ways to increase agility and performance while also increasing the strategic value we provide to our customers’ businesses.“