CommVault Cashes In on Simpana

Backup specialist CommVault announced a solid set of fourth-quarter results tonight, posting revenues of $56.6 million, 33 percent up on the same period last year, and above analyst estimates of $54.06 million.

On a GAAP basis, the vendors fourth-quarter earnings per share were 14 cents on net income of $6.2 million, compared to 14 cents and $51.8 million in the same period last year, although this figure included a tax benefit of $45.6 million.

CommVault’s non-GAAP earnings were 19 cents on net income of $8.5 million, compared to 14 cents and $6 million in the same period last year. Analysts had estimated earnings of 18 cents.

The vendor’s 2008 revenues were $198.3 million, up 31 percent on the prior year. Analysts had estimated revenues of $195.7 million.

”We had a strong fourth quarter and fiscal year,” said CommVault CEO Bob Hammer, explaining that this was reflected across all geographies. “We’re not naïve about the economic climate [but] we continue to see strong demand for our products.”CommVault’s revenues were driven by strong demand for the vendor’s Simpana offering, with software sales up 32 percent year-over-year.

The CEO explained that a third of CommVault’s 8,000-strong customer base has either purchased or upgraded to Simpana, and the vendor added 295 new Simpana customers during the fourth quarter.

The exec also confirmed that CommVault is planning a host of new products, including block-level de-duplication, managing data in virtual server environments, and extending data classification to Unix and Linux environments.

“We’re making very significant progress on a broad range of technologies -- we have a broad pipeline of new products coming to market,” Hammer said, but he refused to say whether these offerings would be available within this calendar year.

The vendor will also be adding more sales people to its 866-strong workforce, as well as investing in its branding during the coming year. “Many prospective customers don’t know about CommVault,” said Hammer, but he did not reveal specific details of its branding effort.CommVault, which competes with Symantec, also issued 2009 revenue guidance of $245 million, a 24 percent hike on 2008. “We’re very confident about our future,” said Hammer. “We believe that we have a solid foundation for growth leading into 2009 and beyond.”

The CommVault CEO also discussed the changing nature of data management during an interview with Byte and Switch yesterday.

"Data management is shifting to disk," he said. "That is being driven by server consolidation, virtualization, remote office backup, and the scale of the data."

The exec also believes that users are looking at their backups differently. "The role of backup is changing from long-term, to much shorter retention," he explained.

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