Before data became the most important driver of business value, it was an afterthought in a company’s information technology strategy. Bolt-on protection was added, and all was good.

Today, add-ons don’t do the job. But many companies lack an alternative. Two-thirds of chief information security officers say their companies are unprepared for a cyberattack, according to research by Proofpoint Inc.

The issue is a gap between what the business wants to do and what the technology teams are equipped to do, stated Commvault Inc. Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Mirchandani in his keynote speech at the recent Commvault Connections21 event.

“Mirchandani said that if we embrace, manage and properly protect data, it will become the defining disruptive difference for an organization,” said Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio.

Vellante analyzed Mirchandani’s keynote and discussed Commvault’s strategy to deliver a comprehensive set of intelligent data services during theCUBE’s coverage of Commvault Connections21. (* Disclosure below.)

Commvault aims for decentralized management with federated governance

“Data silos are not just a technology problem. They are a symptom of flawed organizational constructs,” Vellante said. “By rethinking the data management paradigm, the responsibility for good data protection policy transcends technical teams and becomes a priority for the entire organization.”

As with all effective cloud strategies, the key ingredient in Commvault’s game plan is automation, according to Vellante. He described the evolution of the underlying technology platform to become an operational detail that serves the data owners, where data protection and governance is computationally automated in a federated model.

“The policy is centralized, but the implementation of that policy is done by software. This means that data governance, security, privacy, access and policy are adjudicated wherever possible by software, irrespective of physical location,” he stated.

Describing this process as a renaissance for data, Vellante talked about the decentralization of the responsibility for end-to-end data ownership, with highly specialized technical teams becoming enablers for generalists that build data products and services. This is not shadow IT, but decentralized management with federated governance, he stated.

“By rethinking the data management paradigm, the responsibility for good data protection policy transcends technical teams and becomes a priority for the entire organization,” Vellante said, noting that Commvault’s intelligent data services that span across data protection, security, compliance, governance, data transformation and data insights are designed to achieve this goal.

“The world of enterprise technology is complex and the winning technology companies will be those that can abstract that underlying complexity and assist organizations to implement sound data management practices irrespective of data location in the most efficient way,” he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Commvault Connections21 event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Commvault Connections21 event. Neither Commvault Systems Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Image: Commvault Inc.