My daughter is in one of those small kid phases where she’s wearing out a word. The word is “Ever.”
“Is this cheese the best cheese…ever?”
“Is this the prettiest shirt…ever?”
“Is Disneyland the best place…ever?”
What she’s doing makes me laugh, but there’s a point to it. She’s wanting me to affirm that she’s having the best experiences or using the best products…ever.
Isn’t that what we want? When we buy a product or service, don’t we want the best? If we’re building a relationship with a vendor, don’t we want the best relationship…ever?
Yesterday, I wrote a blog post about a client project that helped me uncover clues to the worst products or companies. Today I want to write about the flip side of that project. By doing my research, I found two of the best data protection companies…ever.
Now, when I say this, I’m not judging their product features and functionality, because I haven’t installed their products. But I spent about eight hours scrubbing their content, looking at customer comments, reading analyst reports, and getting a feel for how these companies do business. This is my opinion from reviewing a bunch of data protection companies.
And the best, on my list….is CommVault. Here are ten reasons why I think CommVault is the best data protection company…ever.
1. The analysts love them. Gartner and Forrester agree, CommVault is a leading company.
2. The company is stable, with the same CEO since 1998 and little management churn.
3. For the past four years, they’ve enjoyed consistent year on year growth with good profitability.
4. They’re growing organically, without acquisitions.
5. Their rate of growth is reasonable, much better than the average data protection company, but not so quickly that you’re left wondering if CommVault’s infrastructure and staffing could keep up.
6. They’re continuing to invest, hiring sales, engineering, developers, and recruiting indirect partners.
7. They have some of the “most together” marketing I’ve seen. Most companies have gaps in their marketing, or problems like outdated content, mixed messaging, or flaws in the way they organize information. CommVault has none of those problems.
8. Customers basically love it. It’s really hard to find complaints about CommVault, and when you do, they’re three years old. Customers tend to say something like “it’s rock solid” when talking about the product.
9. Many customers talk about how useful CommVault services teams have been. CommVault touts a 95% success rate on services customer satisfaction.
10. This is a very subjective thing, but I have to mention it. You know how you meet someone, have a conversation, and gradually you get an impression of the person? After eight hours of researching CommVault, I came away with the feeling that CommVault was “together.” To put it another way, I had a hard time finding flaws. They came off as trustworthy, solid, efficient, effective — not fly by night, or scattered, or struggling. That’s a good feeling to have when picking a vendor.
So in my next post, I’ll talk about the runner up in my search. They’re a much smaller company with an interesting niche.
(* FULL DISCLOSURE: CommVault is not a client, though I have a couple of friends who work there. *)