Growing companies must break through many barriers, and technology provides barriers aplenty. Moving from a small company storage model to a medium company storage model takes effort, planning and more manpower. For those fighting to get a better handle on their storage resources, CommVault wants to throw you a lifeline.

If you don't know CommVault, don't feel bad. It focuses on data management for medium and large (including huge) companies. Those without a lot of storage don't need much help, but start stacking up a dozen or more servers, throw in some network storage, add a remote site, and suddenly you have a storage management mess. Enter CommVault.

Riding the “managed services” wave, CommVault requires a server on your site running its software to handle a variety of management reporting details for you. Its newest product and service offering just hit the streets. Called ROMS for Remote Operations Management Support, this service leverages a mix of CommVault's management services with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tools to provide a management dashboard via the Web.

I spoke with Robert Brower, director of Worldwide Professional Services, about ROMS. “We have a direct connection to the customer's data site. When a system sends an alert of any kind, we can grab the tracking logs to get all the information necessary. We use intelligent reporting to filter out nuisance notifications, so we don't drown the customer in data.”

The “CommServer” on the customer’s premise collects data from software running on your other servers. You can put CommServers in multiple locations and monitor everything from one ROMS Web dashboard.

Of course, when you start talking multiple servers and multiple locations, you start talking about large and medium sized companies. Brower says “about 20% of our direct customers have 25 or fewer servers.” You can also get CommVault services through resellers and hardware vendors like Dell, Hitachi, and NetApp. Brower said its smallest direct customer has about 10 servers, but Dell and others may have smaller installations.

While 10 servers sounds like a lot to small companies, many not-so-large firms find themselves at that number without realizing it happened. You get a few servers for inhouse applications, host your own e-mail and Web servers, add a test server for Microsoft patches and Web page development, and suddenly you have 20 of the suckers stacked here and there. It seems crazy to have a server for every four employees (25 servers for a 100 person firm), but it happens every day. Companies doing serious Web business, like e-commerce, will often have more servers than employees.