Commvault took advantage of its SHIFT 2025 event, held in New York on November 12th, to unveil one of its most ambitious launches in history: Commvault Cloud Unity, a new generation of its Commvault Cloud platform designed to become the central pillar of enterprise resilience amid the explosive growth of artificial intelligence.
The company, publicly traded on the Nasdaq under the ticker CVLT, describes this version as a cloud-native, AI-enabled platform that unifies three traditionally separate areas: data security, cyber recovery, and identity resilience. All of this is tailored for multicloud, SaaS, on-premise, and hybrid environments, which are precisely the scenarios where most large organizations operate today.
The “Perfect Storm” of Enterprise Security
The announcement’s starting point is clear: security and IT teams feel they are navigating a perfect storm. On one hand, AI is generating
Adding to this, a third factor emerges: there is no single deployment model. Organizations combine applications in public clouds, critical SaaS solutions, traditional data centers, and new hybrid environments. Resilience must encompass all these areas, or else it becomes an incomplete puzzle in practice.
Commvault introduces Cloud Unity as a direct response to this triple pressure: less silos, more coherence, and automation driven by AI to detect, protect, and recover before damage becomes irreversible.
A Single Plane for Data Security, Cyber Recovery, and Identity
The main promise of Commvault Cloud Unity is that these three resilience domains will stop functioning as isolated islands:
1. Data Security with Integrated AI
In the Data Security layer, the platform incorporates features such as:
- Intelligent discovery and classification of data, supported by AI to identify sensitive information, its location, and user access.
- Protection policy recommendations to help define what needs safeguarding, with what frequency, and at what retention levels.
- Data and AI resource access governance, including active monitoring and policy enforcement.
These capabilities are strengthened by the recent acquisition of Satori Cyber, specializing in data security and access governance, now integrated into the Commvault Cloud offering.
The goal is to enable companies to rigorously answer increasingly common questions like:
“Who truly has access to my most sensitive data? Which AI models are using it? Am I compliant with my security policies and regulations?”
2. Cyber Recovery for Modern Attacks
Within Cyber Recovery, the focus is on something already evident to many CISOs: having backups is not enough. Speedy, clean, and verifiable recovery after an incident is essential.
Commvault highlights new AI-enabled recovery capabilities designed to:
- Accelerate the identification of “clean” restore points.
- Automate parts of the recovery orchestration process.
- Reduce downtime windows for critical applications.
One noteworthy feature is Synthetic Recovery, intended to enable IT and security teams to surgically eliminate compromised data after a cyberattack while restoring the rest of the environment. Instead of choosing between “restore everything” or “restore nothing,” it allows for more precise recoveries, tailored to the actual scope of the incident.
3. Identity Resilience Against Active Directory Attacks
The third pillar is Identity Resilience, a domain that has gained importance as attackers increasingly target identity systems like Active Directory to escalate privileges and maintain persistence within corporate networks.
Commvault is expanding its solution set to enable organizations to:
- Detect and audit stealthy threats in identity systems.
- Analyze suspicious changes in accounts, permissions, and domain controllers.
- Assist in reverting malicious modifications and restoring known secure identity configurations.
Practically, the approach treats identity not just as an authentication component but as another asset requiring backup, protection, and tailored recovery capabilities, similar to databases or virtual machines.
Unified Protection, Governance, and Intelligence
Beyond the functional blocks, Commvault emphasizes three cross-cutting benefits of the Cloud Unity launch:
- Unifying protection across all environments
Centralizing protection and recovery in a single platform helps organizations reduce downtime and improve availability of trusted data—especially critical in the AI era, where models depend on consistent, up-to-date datasets. - Unified governance over previously disconnected operations
Traditionally, security, identity, and backup teams operate with separate tools and dashboards. With Unity, Commvault aims to consolidate access oversight, data policies, and threat detection for coordinated response and faster “clean recovery” after incidents. - Unified intelligence from dispersed signals
The platform seeks to combine security insights, identity patterns, and recovery signals. This holistic view underpins automated actions driven by AI, designed to continuously optimize resilience instead of reacting only when failures occur.
Designed for the “Agentic” Enterprise
Commvault presents Cloud Unity as a platform tailored to the “agentic” enterprise, companies that are beginning to leverage agents and AI systems to make decisions, execute tasks, and automate business processes.
In this context, resilience is no longer just about backups; it becomes a necessary foundation for allowing organizations to adopt AI without exposing themselves to AI-driven threats, such as more sophisticated, automated attacks targeting data, identities, and recovery points.
Industry analysts note that, until now, efforts to converge these disciplines have been partial, but a platform that tangibly integrates and delivers them at scale for large organizations has been missing. They also highlight the core message: resilience is no longer optional; it is a business imperative.
Availability Timeline and Next Steps
Commvault has announced that some capabilities of Commvault Cloud Unity will be available by the end of this year, with a phased rollout of features extending into early 2026.
This announcement is part of a broader set of innovations unveiled at SHIFT 2025, focusing on:
- Cloud-native data protection.
- New capabilities for identity resilience.
- Innovations in automated cyber recovery.
Interested organizations can follow SHIFT 2025 sessions virtually, where the company will showcase use cases and platform demonstrations.
FAQs about Commvault Cloud Unity
1. What exactly is Commvault Cloud Unity, and how does it differ from the previous Commvault Cloud platform?
Commvault Cloud Unity is an evolution of the Commvault Cloud platform that integrates data security, cyber recovery, and identity resilience into a single plane, with advanced AI-powered capabilities. Unlike earlier approaches focused mainly on backup and recovery, Unity positions itself as a unified resilience solution covering data, identities, and recovery processes across multicloud, SaaS, on-premises, and hybrid environments.
2. How does Commvault Cloud Unity help protect hybrid and multicloud environments in the AI era?
The platform is designed to operate consistently across public cloud, SaaS, and on-premises data centers, applying intelligent discovery and classification, protection policies, access monitoring, and recovery orchestration from a single console. Leveraging AI, it can detect anomalies, recommend policies, and assist in identifying clean restore points across dispersed cloud providers and local systems.
3. What does Commvault’s identity resilience offer against attacks on Active Directory and other identity systems?
Identity resilience focuses on detecting, auditing, and reversing complex threats in identity systems like Active Directory, where malicious privilege changes or account manipulation can compromise entire organizations. Cloud Unity integrates these features within the same platform managing backups and recovery, making it easier to restore secure identity configurations and coordinate end-to-end clean recoveries after attacks.
4. When will Commvault Cloud Unity be available, and how can organizations assess if it fits into their cybersecurity resilience strategy?
Some functionalities are set to become available by late 2025, with a gradual rollout extending into early 2026. Organizations should begin evaluating their current setup—number of isolated backup, security, and identity tools; recovery times; and adoption of AI and cloud services. From there, it makes sense to consider if a unified platform like Unity can streamline operations, reduce risks, and accelerate recovery.
Sources:
– commvault – SHIFT 2025 (presentation of Commvault Cloud Unity)
– Corporate information from Commvault on unified resilience, data security, cyber recovery, and identity resilience