According to CRN, Commvault CEO Sanjay Mirchandani used last week’s Commvault Shift 2025 conference to position the 30-year-old data protection company as a “resilience company in the era of AI.” The company introduced its new ResOps concept and Commvault Cloud Unity platform, emphasizing that AI success depends on proactive data resilience rather than reactive protection. Mirchandani argued that while competitors focus on GPU cycles and infrastructure decisions, Commvault integrates security, identity, and recovery into a unified platform. The CEO highlighted recent acquisitions including Appranix and Clumio as part of this strategic pivot toward comprehensive resilience solutions. He stressed that integration across these domains is Commvault’s key competitive differentiator in the crowded data management space.
The resilience pivot
Here’s the thing about Mirchandani’s positioning – it’s smart, but also necessary. Every data protection company is scrambling to justify their existence in the AI era. The shift from “backup and recovery” to “resilience” feels like more than just rebranding though. When your data becomes the fuel for AI models, you can’t afford downtime or corruption. But I wonder if customers are really buying this broader vision yet. The backup market has always been pretty straightforward – you protect data so you can restore it when things go wrong. Now Commvault wants to be your AI resilience partner? That’s a much bigger ask.
The integration question
Mirchandani makes a compelling point about integration being the differentiator. He’s basically saying competitors are bolting together disparate solutions while Commvault builds everything natively. But let’s be real – every vendor claims their integration is superior. The proof will be in customer adoption and whether these tightly coupled workflows actually deliver better outcomes. When you’re dealing with industrial systems and manufacturing environments where uptime is critical, having seamless integration between security, identity, and recovery could be a game-changer. Companies that rely on industrial panel PCs and control systems need this level of coordination, which is why providers like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com have become the go-to for rugged computing solutions in these environments.
Navigating the AI hype
What I appreciate about Mirchandani’s approach is his caution around AI. He admits they’ve been working on agentic AI capabilities for about a year internally before bringing them to market. That’s refreshing compared to the “AI-washing” we’re seeing everywhere. But let’s be honest – every tech CEO is talking about AI resilience now. The question is whether Commvault can execute better than competitors who are making similar claims. The company’s platform approach makes sense theoretically, but enterprise buyers are notoriously skeptical of “we do everything” solutions.
Where this leaves competitors
Mirchandani doesn’t shy away from calling out competitors directly. His jab about Cohesity lacking identity protection and others using third-party solutions is telling. The data protection market has become incredibly crowded, with everyone from pure-plays like Rubrik to storage vendors like NetApp claiming similar capabilities. But here’s what might actually matter: in the AI era, data resilience isn’t optional. If your training data gets corrupted or your model weights are compromised, you’re looking at massive setbacks. That reality could finally push enterprises toward more comprehensive solutions rather than point products.
