Partner POV | AI in Commvault Cloud

Article written and provided by, Commvault. 

For over a decade, Commvault has leveraged artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and intelligent automation to enhance our platform's capabilities. This AI improves data protection and recovery operations and assists customers in managing risk, locating sensitive data, and more. 

At the heart of our AI innovations is Metallic® AI, our intelligent control layer that powers Commvault Cloud. From automation and ML to advanced AI, Metallic AI brings greater performance and efficiency to every aspect of the Commvault Cloud platform.

AI You Can Trust 

As we harness the power of AI in our products and services, we are committed to upholding ethical standards and responsible AI deployment. The NIST AI Risk Management Framework (RMF) 1.0 best practices are our guiding principles. These measures help our AI deployment to be responsible, safe, and secure so that our customers can confidentially leverage the benefits of AI.

Capabilities Powered by AI 

Machine Learning 

We leverage ML to help predict threats faster, enable cleaner recoveries, accelerate response times, and dramatically lower TCO. Certain AI functionality, such as background-running ML used to flag anomalies, cannot be disabled. These AI features use AI models which are local to each customer's environment. They do not interact with customer backup data. The capabilities outlined below feature ML technology and are applicable to both software and SaaS: 

• Commvault Cloud Risk Analysis:
  • Sensitive Data Discovery and Classification—We leverage AI-enabled contextual learning to efficiently identify and automatically classify sensitive files such as Social Security Numbers, health records, and financial data across hybrid infrastructure. Our AI algorithms go beyond simple pattern recognition, enabling us to accurately identify document types and assess their potential risk. With our risk and sensitivity scoring, you can confidently quarantine or delete sensitive files, minimizing the risk of data exfiltration and maintaining compliance with industry regulations.
  • Threat Scan Predict—We utilize threat insights from Avira's global sensor network to provide ML threat detection within backups. This helps detect zero-day and polymorphic malware threats that have already affected backup content so you can respond and recover clean data, avoiding reinfection.
• Commvault Cloud Threat Scan: 
  • Smart Job Scheduling—We employ time-series-based ML to predict job run times, which allows for job schedules to be optimized through optimal sequencing. Workloads are prioritized based on desired recovery point objectives (RPOs) to meet business requirements and minimize data protection windows, all without manual intervention from users.
• Integrated within the Commvault Cloud Platform 
  • Anomaly Detection—Our system diligently monitors events in your environment, utilizing ML algorithms to analyze event timelines and establish baseline behavior for each machine. By comparing file characteristic changes against established baselines, we identify abnormal behaviors and provide automated alerts, empowering administrators to take immediate action and mitigate data risks.
  • Auto-scaling and Load Balancing—Commvault Cloud utilizes ML to assess data protection needs in real-time, analyzing data growth trends over time, forecasting the required compute resources to meet defined SLAs, and automatically adjusting compute resources up or down.
  • Predictive Forecasting—Our algorithms analyze historical consumption usage patterns and growth trends to provide precise predictions of your future storage requirements, giving you ample time to respond and add capacity as needed.
  • Semantic Search—ML aids in correcting and interpreting commands within the global entity search bar in the Commvault Cloud Console. By grasping the context and intent of queries, we make certain that accurate and relevant information is delivered, facilitating user navigation and interaction with Commvault Cloud console functionalities.

Generative AI 

We leverage Generative AI to streamline the configuration and use of Commvault Cloud. It is solely used to power Arlie, the AI assistant, an optional feature available in the Commvault Cloud console. Users can interact conversationally with Arlie to learn how to use the product and troubleshoot errors, making it easy to use. This approach not only simplifies the user experience, but also optimizes feature utilization to its fullest potential.

Arlie is optional for installed software and can be activated or deactivated at any time according to customer preference. In SaaS, Arlie is enabled by default to enhance the user experience, but it does not collect any data in the background when not used, thereby maintaining customer data privacy. While the option to use it is always available, SaaS customers may decide to not utilize Arlie entirely if they prefer.

Capabilities of Arlie include: 

• API Code Assist—Offers a "no-code" way to build an integration or code an action. Simply type a description of what you want to do in natural language and get step-by-step instructions on the APIs to use and how to use them.
• Active Insights—AI troubleshooting to discover operational issues in Commvault Cloud. Get insights, recommendations, and steps for resolving job issues.
• Custom Walkthroughs—Context-sensitive, guided product walk-throughs that make it easy to perform new tasks in Commvault Cloud.
• Arlie™ Chatbot—Ask "how-to" questions and get step-by-step guidance on configuring and using Commvault Cloud to maximize cyber resilience.