Storage @ Work

Jerome Wendt posted an interview with Randy DeMeno, chief evangelist at Commvault about their relationship with Microsoft.

I'll never forget a meeting I had with Bob Hammer, Commvault CEO at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose in the same time frame. I questioned him on his sanity for going to Commvault - a 2nd or 3rd tier company in the backup industry at that time when there were big gorillas wandering the forest (Veritas, Legato, CA and Seagate Software). He explained that he thought there was an opening for his company to work very closely with Microsoft and to grow their business along with Microsoft's business. I asked how this decision went over at a company that had been mostly a Unix shop and he replied that there was simply no looking back. People that weren't with the program weren't with the company. He flatly stated that good business decisions needed to be backed up with unanimous conviction. It's interesting to read about how DeMeno and his team engaged Microsoft with the kind of single purpose conviction at a time when many other storage software companies viewed Microsoft as a potential threat - just as some might view VMware today with Storage Vmotion

Anyway, Commvault was on its way to being a very successful turnaround when Don Bulens asked me for help landing the job as CEO at EqualLogic. Some of the board at EqualLogic thought that they needed a storage industry insider and Don definitely wasn't one. I told him he needed to lean very heavily on the example of Hammer at Commvault, another "outsider" who knew how to make good business decisions and left the technology work to people like DeMeno. What Don and I didn't know was how good Paula Long was at the technology end of things. In retrospect, it should have been clear to the board - Paula was brilliant and she just needed somebody who was her equal working on the business end. But its not clear to me that the board would have hired Don had Bob Hammer not been such an obvious standout as a non-storage person running a successful storage company.