Commvault, a recognised global enterprise leader in intelligent data services across on-premises, cloud, and Software as a Service (SaaS) environments, has partnered with Logicalis for them to be an integrator for Metallic SaaS platform Via the Microsoft Market Place in the region. They will be the first Microsoft/ Commvault partner to launch this service on Microsoft Market Place.

Gerhard Fourie, Channel Lead at Commvault Africa, explains the deal stems from Commvault’s drive to select partners that are aligned with its ethos and go to market strategy, underpinned by Logicalis’ global alliance footprint with major players such as Microsoft and Cisco.

“This, as well as Logicalis’ technology skills, expertise and reputation in the market made it the logical next step for us to want to onboard them as a partner and to start working with them,” Fourie says. “Essentially, Logicalis fits in with where we are trying to go with our partner strategy, in that we are looking for partners with the skills to help us to build our product portfolio and deliver it to our customers. These skills are not just in the area of product technology, but also in terms of delivering an as-a-service model.”

Global presence

Logicalis is a global solutions integrator owned by the JSE-listed Datatec group and has been operating internationally for more than two decades. The company entered the South African market five years ago and currently has a presence in 38 countries, employing more than 7 000 people.

Morné Laubscher, Chief Technology Officer at Logicalis South Africa, says that from a local market perspective, the agreement with Commvault makes great sense as Commvault has the most comprehensive offering when it comes to a heterogenous multi-technology approach to on-premises data centres.

This is in addition to its ability to extend this architecture into the cloud in a hybrid manner alongside its ability to provide world-class protection for cloud workloads inside the Microsoft public cloud.

“In the enterprise space, with Commvault’s Metallic, we are able to provide a holistic service on one platform, which tackles a lot of the complexity from the environment and gives us the ability to provide a turnkey, trustworthy service, at a cost-effective rate,” says Laubscher.

SME space

“In the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) market, there seems to be less knowledgeable insight around the fact that in the cloud your data remains your responsibility. With SaaS offerings such as Metallic, our SME customers can rest easy knowing their businesses are protected against ransomware, are compliant with regulations, and have insights and archives of their data, over and above what the hyperscaler provides natively.”

Metallic is part of Commvault's Intelligent Data Services Platform that enables organisations to proactively simplify and manage the complexity of enterprise data. Microsoft leverages Commvault to manage and protect some of its most important data, including data in Azure, Office and other technologies.

Metallic covers the entire spectrum of data protection, with its biggest focus being the protection of Microsoft 365 environments that are hosted on the Microsoft cloud platform. It is also the ideal platform to protect hybrid cloud environments and workloads, including end-point devices, physical server environments and virtual environments.