Backup specialist Commvault has lifted the lid on a spin-off software as a service (SaaS) venture that allows customers to safeguard their either on-prem or cloud-based files and application data.

Launched at the firm’s annual Commvault GO conference, the Metallic portfolio is geared towards addressing a growing demand among Commvault’s customers for SaaS backup and recovery services.

Metallic will be pitched at large businesses of between 500 and 2,500 employees and is set to launch with three strands that span the breadth of SaaS-based data management, including one service devoted entirely to Microsoft Office 365.

Its launch is also significant in the way Commvault has pointedly decided to assign the platform a brand in and of itself, rather than including this under the Commvault umbrella.

This, according to the firm’s CEO Sanjay Mirchandani, is because Metallic signifies a divergence from how Commvault has traditionally developed and launched a product.

«Part of what Metallic represented for us as a company is a new way of building,» said Mirchandani. «We funded it and created a startup within the company, they could tap into anything they wanted to within Commvault or not.

«Choose the go-to-market model, choose the partners they wanted to work with, give them the freedom to create something that is world-class and designed to solve real problems for customers. And they had the best of both worlds.»

The three strands comprising Metallic include Core, Office 365 and Endpoint services, each aimed at varying elements of protecting data within a large organisation.

Core, for instance, centres on the ‘essentials’ of data spanning from VMware data protection to Microsoft SQL database backup. By contrast, Endpoint backup and recovery focuses on protecting data stored locally on machines within an organisation.

The Office 365 provision, meanwhile, is dedicated to protecting an organisation’s work within the productivity suite of apps and services to safeguard against potential issues like accidental deletion and corruption.

Available in only the US at first, these are available either through monthly or annual subscriptions, while prospective customers can sign up to a free trial through the platform’s dedicated website.

Commvault decided to build the Metallic brand, Mirchandani added, after extensive consultation with partners and its customers. Its developers decided the best approach to building Metallic would be to adopt the viewpoint of an organisation’s chief information officer (CIO) and consider their backup needs.