Korea needs to accept new trends in data management

By Cho Mu-hyun

David Kwon, president of CommVault Korea

David Kwon, area president of data solutions provider CommVault Korea, said Monday that the local market must be more ready to embrace growing trends in information management.

“When I started as the president of the company, on a scale of one to 10, the understanding of software data solutions was zero here,” he said during a recent interview with The Korea Times.

“But now it is 3.5 and rising. Local clients are trying their best with the understanding and tools they have.”

A long-standing veteran in the information technology industry and working at global giants LG Electronics, IBM and Cisco before he took the reins of the CommVault office here in 2008, he said the keyword that needs to be realized is cooperation.

“Our products reflect changes of the times. Koreans love new things but are always hesitant to accept them,” he said.

“It has changed during the past few years and they are more accepting but there needs to be a more co-evolving ecosystem that sees providers, channels and clients come together more closely.”

CommVault provides solutions under its Simpana brand that is widely used by integrated system providers.

Its specialty is data recovery and effective archive management that helps clients detect unnecessary or redundant data. “Our solutions increase cost-efficiency, which automatically leads to a low workload for hardware data storage that helps control carbon emissions as well,” he said.

The firm boasts over 350 clients including the top-tier local technology giants here, and over 14,000 globally. Most of its employees are system engineers and the company boasts a diverse portfolio of core technologies,.

“No matter how much you tell them of the need to change, unless the recipient has is ready to accept that advice, it won’t happen,” said Kwon.

But since he began his tenure, more and more local companies have discarded analogue ways of storing data and accepted the importance of efficient management through software, such as those provided by his firm.

Previous data management was done through separate code bases, multiple interfaces and required diverse products, but Simpana offers one, unifying solution.

Under Kwon, ComVault Korea has broadened both its brand recognition and client base, with last year’s revenue growth estimated to be 100 percent from 2011.

The year before that the company saw a rise of 20 percent but solutions sales fluctuate widely depending on the project and client, the president added.

Kwon’s company emerged in the 1990s along with others such as Red Hat, Cisco and VMware to challenge long-standing technology giants such as IBM and Oracle.

Along with rapid technological development and a gigantic amount of information accumulation (CommVault estimated that companies’ data grows at an average rate of 40 percent a year), they have made their own niche market with its advanced technology and a strategy focusing on individual sectors, specifically storage.

He said that the data storage market, or hardware integration, is currently dominated by EMC.

CommVault provides its solutions to many original equipment manufacturers to make data storage products that could challenge EMC.

“Previously, many clients didn’t want their names mentioned when it concerned our firm but we now enjoy a wider acceptance here and are growing substantially,” he said.