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Initiation of Research Coverage: CommVault Systems, Inc.

CHICAGO, June 29, 2010 - William Blair & Company initiated research coverage of CommVault Systems, Inc. (CVLT $21.75), the leading pure-play in the $11.5 billion storage software market, with an Outperform rating and Aggressive Growth company profile. CommVault Systems provides software for storing and managing enterprise data, handling tasks such as resource management, backup, archiving, data replication, disaster recovery, and search.

Analyst Jason Ader estimated the company would generate earnings per share of $0.82 in fiscal 2011 and $0.98 in fiscal 2012.

“The overall market for storage software has been growing steadily,” Ader said, “fueled by sheer growth in digital data, increasing regulatory compliance and disaster-recovery requirements, and architectural changes in the data center. We see CommVault as a classic share-gain story, based on the strength and breadth of its product offering, a broadening distribution story, and a competitive field that is not nearly as focused on this space. CommVault’s main value proposition is being the only vendor with a fully integrated suite of storage software, all built on the same code base and managed from a single console, which lowers total cost of ownership and allows the company to rapidly introduce new features and stay on the technical cutting edge.”

Ader continued, “A key recent driver for CommVault’s share gains has been the breadth of its offering, which has lent itself to success with different buyers in the organization. All else equal (particularly European demand), we expect CommVault’s business momentum to continue off a strong start to the calendar year. Near-term catalysts include the new Simpana platform release (late summer), which among other items is expected to deliver differentiation around deduplication and cloud storage connectivity, and enable for the first time data management for non-CommVault environments. In addition, CommVault’s recent introduction of capacity pricing, which enables customers to buy CommVault’s entire suite on a per-terabyte basis, could accelerate share gains. We see continued room for upward earnings revisions and multiple expansion as the company broadens its market presence and continues to take share, and we believe takeout interest in CommVault could be high.”

William Blair & Company, L.L.C. is a global investment firm offering investment banking, asset management, equity research, institutional and private brokerage, and private capital to individual, institutional, and issuing clients. Since 1935, we have been committed to helping clients achieve their financial objectives. As an independent, employee-owned firm, our philosophy is to serve our clients' interests first and foremost. We place a high value on the enduring nature of our client relationships, the quality of our products and services, and the continuity and integrity of our people. William Blair & Company is based in Chicago, with office locations including Boston, London, New York, San Francisco, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Zurich. For more information, please visit www.williamblair.com.

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Current Ratings Distribution (as of 5/31/10)

Coverage Universe
Outperform (Buy): 66%
Market Perform (Hold): 33%
Underperform (Sell): 1%

Inv. Banking Relationships*
Outperform (Buy): 6%
Market Perform (Hold): 2%
Underperform (Sell): 0%

* Percentage of companies in each rating category that are investment banking clients, defined as companies for which William Blair has received compensation for investment banking services within the past 12 months.

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