Commvault Cloud Reviews

We are mainly using it for backing up our VMware environment, some file servers, and some SQL databases. We also use it for some replication.

Before Commvault we had one product for backup, one for replication, and a few consoles. That was hard to manage for the administrator. With Commvault it's just one product, just one license. It does not require a special, separate license for deduplication or other stuff. It's easy to manage everything now.

Commvault provides us with a single platform to move, manage, and recover our data across on-premises locations. We usually have daily, incremental backups and a full backup weekly. That leads to reduced storage space for our Commvault storage. It's saving us about 30 percent.

The fact that the solution is a single platform has enabled our company to accelerate growth. We have a database and there are some major changes that happen to it at the end of month, or sometimes the developers have done something to change it in a whole different way. Before they apply those changes, we take a backup with Commvault so if something has gone wrong with the update, we can always revert it back.

Also, because it has alerts enabled, the solution helps our admins to minimize the time they spend on backup tasks so they can spend time on other projects. We don't monitor the backup system all the time. We only look at it when we get email alerts. If something has failed, then we'll look at what the error is and what's happening. There are daily backup reports configured so that at 10:00 am, every day, I get a backup report. It says what has been backed up and what has not.

In addition, we have had a few crashes of our VM environment and we have had to restore some VMs, as well as some files that have been deleted by users off our file server. We had another solution before, but that was before I started with the company. People say it was pretty crappy and that sometimes, when they were doing recovery, it took about eight to 10 hours for a VM. But with Commvault, the last time I did a recovery of a 500 GB hard disk with a VM, it took about one-and-a-half hours. That is good.

Finally, Commvault has helped by telling me there are outdated tools in the VM environment.

The most important feature is that everything can be controlled using a single console. That is the best feature of Commvault.

The user interface is a bit tough, to be honest, but once you get the hang of it, it's okay. In the beginning it was tough, but now I know what I'm doing. We had free training but after that, just to learn the interface took me four to six months. There are still things to learn because with every service pack there are changes. Service Pack 18 was recently released and there are some features that I haven't even seen yet.

I would like them not to push Command Center. It is good, but I would like them to enable all the features for the Java console. Some things are not in the Java console, like Office 365 agents. In fact, they are there, but one of the engineers had to show me how to configure it. It's not done the same as in the Command Center.

I have been using Commvault since 2018.

It's stable. 

Sometimes the Java console might not respond. It might happen one out of 20 times that the Java console might crash. And then we have to use Task Manager to end it and reopen it. Other than that, the server has never crashed nor has the database ever crashed.

We have actually moved into 365 recently. We had to buy some licenses but they agreed to give us some trial licenses for testing, but it is based on the user base. Commvault is supporting everything that we are doing.

The technical support in the India region is a bit disappointing, but after 6:00 pm it is switched to the U.S and European teams, and they are much better in supporting and understanding the issues and fixing them. Sometimes the Indian team is also good, but we don't usually raise a ticket until after 6:00 pm. If it's a small issue that doesn't cause any harm to the production environment, we will go to the Indian team and some of them are good enough to help us.

Our company switched to Commvault because it had some issues with recovering data and the recovery time was high. Also, the local support team for our old product was not available when we needed them. That's why they were looking for something new and they found Commvault.

The setup was straightforward. We didn't have many complications. When we had to install the agents on the servers, there were some issues with authentication with the SQL database, but that was from the database side. That was sorted and there was nothing much more than the usual administrative stuff.

The initial deployment took about three weeks because we had some complications with database servers. Some of them had to study the user account permissions. After that was sorted out, it was fine.

Our strategy was to install it on critical servers. After the vendor installed the physical servers for Commvault, we had to download about nine to 10 GB of their setup files. After that, they installed and there were some prerequisites to complete such as .NET. After that, it was pretty easy. Once we installed we had some local support. We also had to plan and provide retention periods.

We had support from the local distributor. They were very friendly and they were cooperative and concerned with our requirements. They addressed them properly. Overall it was a good experience. 

And they provided us with the training after the deployment. We played with our environment for two to three months after the deployment, and then they gave us the training. That approach was better because we had an idea about what we were learning. We had questions when we went to the training so it was very good.

Commvault licensing is a perpetual license so only the support is being renewed yearly.

I don't like the solution's Command Center. I don't know why they have pushed it. The old Java console is much better. Maybe it's because I was used to it. One good thing about the Command Center is that it has reduced the steps we have to take. If we had to do 10 steps on the Java console, it's been reduced to four or five steps in Command Center. But I'm confused about whether I'm doing things right because there are some steps missing. For a newcomer, Command Center would be good. But for me, I still prefer the Java console.

Currently, there is only me, as a system administrator, and another guy on the database team who use Commvault. That's all. We don't have many administrators.

We have used the Commvault solution to take mobile backups from our client locations. We had multiple data sites where data was not scattered in a distributed mode, and we utilized the Commvault client with all the users. 

We started collecting data from their machines to the centralized server. We especially used Commvault to back up Outlook and flat files, as well as databases like MS SQL and SQL using native services. For other databases, we used Commvault.

The solution saved us a lot of time, effort, and manpower. It helped us back up remote locations where it is difficult to reach. 

It also enabled us to take backups from all clients efficiently. The implementation of Commvault is very easy, especially if it's deployed on machines within the same network.

The feedback from users was phenomenal as they did not encounter any problems with backups, whether from Outlook or other data such as flat files and databases. 

The functionality and features of Commvault were much better compared to other solutions.

Commvault could improve in the area of monitoring and notification services. Upon backup completion, the user is not getting notifications. This might be a feature I'm missing within the system. If it’s not there, Commvault should enhance this functionality. 

Additionally, customer support should be improved for quicker real-time assistance, considering the time zone challenges.

In the past, support has been phenomenal, and the people at Commvault have been very supportive. 

However, recently, due to time zone differences, it has taken a lot of time to connect in real time with support staff. There is an issue in finding customer support services within India.

Positive

Commvault is slightly more expensive than similar solutions. We observed a pricing range of 15% to 17% more.

We have evaluated other solutions in the market, but due to the functionalities and features offered by Commvault, we opted to use it despite the higher price.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Our company integrates Commvault Cloud, a backup and recovery software solution, for customers. While Commvault Cloud itself resides in the cloud, each customer has the flexibility to choose their preferred cloud provider.

Commvault Cloud has been reliable for our customer's data backups – I haven't encountered any problems, and restorations have consistently been stable.

Commvault Cloud streamlines operations with its built-in scheduler, but we can also leverage external scheduling tools through its Bay REST API. This allows for comprehensive disaster recovery processes, including source and replication monitoring, for both backups to the cloud and failovers back from the cloud, ultimately optimizing our disaster recovery workflows.

Commvault Cloud cuts operational expenses by eliminating the need for on-premise software installations, and its integration with multiple cloud storage providers allows us to leverage the most cost-effective options for our backups.

Commvault Cloud's deduplication technology and compression capabilities solved our challenge of backing up massive data volumes by eliminating redundant data and significantly reducing storage requirements.

Commvault Cloud stands out for its ease of use and reliable backups, along with its ability to handle large data volumes for VMs, servers, and applications. It offers flexibility with disaster recovery features, efficient storage management, and strong compliance capabilities for governance.

Commvault Cloud currently lacks support for backing up Proxmox environments, which limits its functionality. This is an area where the software could be improved.

I have been using Commvault Cloud for three years.

I would rate the stability of Commvault Cloud ten out of ten.

I would rate the scalability of Commvault Cloud nine out of ten.

While technical support offers a quick response time in English, French-language assistance comes with a wait due to limited availability.

Positive

The initial deployment of Commvault Cloud is straightforward. The cloud version is much easier than the on-prem one because Commvault has reduced the product to the primary use for end users.

Commvault Cloud deployment time varies depending on what you're backing up. Simple setups, like backing up Microsoft Mailbox or SharePoint, can be done in one to two hours, while more complex on-premises installations for VMs or servers might take half a day up to one day.

Two to three people are required for the deployments. This includes one person from the customer's IT department and an end user of the application.

We implement Commvault Cloud for our customers.

I would rate the price of Commvault Cloud seven out of ten with ten being the cheapest.

I would rate Commvault Cloud nine out of ten. Commvault Cloud is one of the best backup products I have used. When I install Commvault Cloud in a customer's organization, I never worry about it not working. It helps me sleep at night. 

We handle Commvault Cloud maintenance for our customers, ensuring smooth operation. While issues are rare, we often assist customers with restoring data, as infrequent use can lead to forgetting the process. Additionally, we perform biannual agent upgrades to maintain optimal performance.

I recommend Commvault Cloud to others. 

The product is a little honeypot server or technology we can deploy in our network. If an attacker gains access to our network and looks around for things, they would find assets that look real but are honeypots. We have a couple hundred of those deployed in our environment, looking like various servers, other types of technology, and workstations spread out across our network.

The tool gives us a lot of heads up if there's a potential threat in our environment. We've seen it when we have had penetration testers running tests. They trip all over it, thinking they're finding vulnerable services to exploit, but they were just alerting the security about their presence.

The solution looks like workstations and servers. If somebody tries to poke at one of them, they would think they're interacting with a real live service. The product alerts the security team about threats.

The solution must provide deception files across the network.

I have been using the solution for two years. My organization has been using it for four years.

I haven't seen any performance issues with the solution.

Once you have an appliance deployed somewhere, it's very scalable. It's pretty easy to deploy more traps. We have 14 different locations. So, we needed 14 different appliances that had to be configured, shipped out, and installed on the network. Generally, the product is pretty scalable, considering it has a physical deployment component.

The support’s excellent. The team is always willing to get on the phone and work through our issues. We can go straight to our account manager. It's very convenient.

Positive

We have a cloud management component of the tool, but all the hardware is physically deployed in different locations. We have appliances deployed to each location that run all the different VMs, and it looks like they're on those particular networks. The deployment will be a little bit of a heavy lift if we have a big distributed environment. We've just been using the products since we migrated from the on-premise appliance to the cloud-hosted one. We don't have to do any support or maintenance.

For the price that we spend, the peace of mind that the tool gives us is an ROI.

I’m happy with the pricing of the product.

It's a very good solution that meets most needs in the deceptions space. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

We are using it as a backup and recovery solution. 

We have a server on-premises. Our hardware is running on HP devices. We are only using the on-premises solution. In the future, we will use the hybrid or cloud solution. Our management is trying to go for hybrid solutions.

As a company, we faced ransomware attacks twice, and both times, we recovered because of Commvault's backup and recovery solution. 

It helps in protecting our customers' data very easily. Compared to other vendors, Commvault has a lot of features. If something happens, we end up spending a lot of money to recover data, but Commvault protects the data. Considering that, its cost is very low. It has reduced the cost of recovering data. 

It is very easy to isolate and segment storage targets from public networks to mitigate lateral moving threats. 

It helps our admins to minimize the time they spend on backup tasks. They can spend time on other projects. Previously, we had to manually check every weekend whether the backup is okay or not. Now, things are running automatically. Commvault has a good notification system. Altogether, these features reduce a lot of manhours. They have saved 48 hours weekly.

The recovery features are useful. It is easy to recover data. If something happens, we can easily recover data. We have faced ransomware issues twice, and we recovered because of Commvault. 

It provides consistent recovery processes across platforms. In terms of recovery options for our data and workloads, I would give it a 10 out of 10. We can easily recover files and data in case of any issues.

It is user-friendly and easy to use. If you have a technical background, you can easily identify the features and use them. There is nothing complex. 

They can improve the security level for Windows. When mapping to the Windows, Commvault can take full control over data volumes so that the attacker can't delete the volume data, but the Windows admin can access the volumes. It would be great to block access at that level. 

We have been using the Commvault product for more than three years.

We have been using this solution for more than three years, and there have been no major failures. It has been running day-to-day backups without any issues. We have backup scheduled over the weekends, and we also have daily backups. We are running full backups over the weekends and incremental backups on weekdays. 

Their support team is very friendly, and they can easily understand our situation. They are very fast to respond and knowledgeable. They can understand the issues that we are facing, and it is very easy to work with them. They provide good support. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

We got good training notes from Commvault's side. There are a lot of documents, and if we want to find something, we refer to their documentation, which makes it very easy to use. There are no major issues.

We earlier used Veeam as a backup solution. We were using Veeam's Community Edition. We also used HP data protector previously. We finally tried the Commvault solution.

Commvault people came and gave a presentation to us, and as compared to Veeam, Commvault had many features. It was user-friendly and easy to use, and it also had a lot of features. It had ransomware protection and data recovery. Veeam didn't have protection features. Our management agreed to use Commvault, and they gave their permission.

Initially, it was complex for us to understand things. They gave us training, and since then, we have been using it easily. Now, it is very easy to understand.

We work with a reseller in Sri Lanka.

We have seen an ROI. It is saving a lot of money, but I don't have the number. It is a good solution to recover our data if something happens. We don't need to spend a lot of money. 

It is a bit more than other products, but when you consider the time savings, it is saving money.

We looked at a few other solutions such as Veritas.

Commvault is a good solution, and we would recommend it to others. There are no major issues with Commvault. We have full trust in it when it comes to protection. They have built a good customer reputation when it comes to protection. Our management is also very satisfied with it.

I would rate it a 10 out of 10 in terms of protection and features.

We are a partner and a service provider for Commvault in the Middle East. We use it for both backup and recovery, and sometimes for replication. 

It has on-prem solutions and we are also going with Azure.

Commvault is the first software company to release software for Nutanix AHV backup. We have an implementation here, with a government company, where we are taking a backup of the Nutanix virtual machine and their database, and replicating this backup to the DR. That way, if the main site is down or something has become corrupt or something is wrong with the backup, they are able to restore from the DR backup. It is the largest implementation in the Middle East.

The solution provides us with a single platform to move, manage, and recover data across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud locations, making it very effective. We can replicate the data even when building a new data center for DR. That makes it easier for us because from there we are able to restore using Commvault.

It provides us with a single console where we can back up our software, our databases, and even our desktops and laptops, even if they are connected remotely, at any time and from any place. Whenever the bandwidth is available and whenever the process is available, it will take a backup.

Commvault also supports most of the cloud vendors. We can back up cloud-based applications like Office 365 to on-prem, and we back up our on-prem data to the cloud as well. It can be anywhere, either local or in the cloud.

It helps to minimize the time admins spend on backup tasks. Once it is configured perfectly you can forget about it, in terms of administration. It saves our admins along the lines of 20 weeks per year.

And with Commvault, you don't need multiple applications to back up different kinds of platforms. It can be OpenStack, VMware, Hyper-V, a physical machine, or Oracle. It's a single point for backups.

When it comes to saving on storage we are saving 20 percent. In terms of storage optimization, it is seven times more efficient. You can store 700 TB in about 100 TB of space.

We have helped many clients to recover from ransomware using Commvault. For one of our clients, we were able to get them back into production in one week. That was an environment with 200 servers and 1,400 user backups. Without Commvault it would have taken some months.

One of the most valuable features is the encryption which helps save you from ransomware. Because the data is already encrypted, it cannot be encrypted again.

The restore performance is better than with any other product. That's why Commvault is number-one in industry reviews.

With Command Center, you can view the backup schedules, the running backups, and the data availability.

It takes a lot of technical expertise to implement. Commvault could increase the training it provides to customers and partners.

Also, with technology changing, it could use more features. Maybe they could include artificial intelligence.

We have been using Commvault since 2015.

The stability is really good. Once you implement it properly you can forget. It's an automated solution. You don't need to troubleshoot anything.

As software, it's scalable. You can add any number of licenses as often as you want. Commvault has options to scale using appliances and software.

Commvault's technical support is really good. I would rate it at nine out of 10.

We have used Veeam. Commvault is more of an enterprise product. In terms of the scope of integration across multi-cloud/hybrid environments, Veeam is a five out of 10, while Commvault is an eight.

The setup is not straightforward. It is a little complex. It really needs expertise, unlike other software.

The deployment time depends on the size of the environment, the number of servers and the storage size. It has taken us anywhere from one week to three months.

As a result of our experience in setting it up, we have created our own plan for doing so. We do a complete environment study of the client by using a solution survey sheet. That gives us complete visibility into the databases they have, the number of servers, the virtualization platform, and the physical machines. According to that, we suggest a plan for the size, if it is on-prem. We have a project management professional to make the process smoother. We have four engineers who implement Commvault and they are also responsible for maintenance.

ROI with Commvault will take about five years. It's cost-efficient when it is used at the enterprise level.

Some years ago, Commvault had a huge price. Now, it is cheaper than Veeam.

It's also available per VM license or per socket or per storage capacity and you can mix licenses. You can have some VM licenses and some socket licenses, for example.

We evaluated NetBackup. Commvault has better encryption technology and restore performance.

Keep on training and select a proper implementation company. That is the most important thing.

Most of our clients are only using Commvault. If they go with Commvault they won't use any other product. It can back up everything: servers, databases, storage snapshots — everything. They don't need other software.

Right now we are using on-premise and cloud backups. We run 300 to 400 jobs per day.

Compared to other products out there, we have found that Commvault is best suited for our needs. We can easily restore and deploy the data.

Previously, before the introduction of Commvault, we used other software including Rubrik. But with Commvault we can deploy multiple clients at a time and we can back up multiple clients without any issues. Right now, we are using about 1,000 VMs. Before Commvault we used to back up about 200 servers and 100 VMs. Previously, backups took nine hours. With Commvault it takes minutes.

The solution definitely helps our admins to minimize the time they spend on backup tasks and to spend time on other projects. If we need to run backups for dozens of servers, it can be done in one minute because it can be done in a click. We can select the backups by selecting the client computer groups. We can categorize those groups and, based on that categorization, we can run the backups and we can restore the VMs as well. It can be done in minutes. Running backups twice a week, it saves us about 5 to 6 hours each time.

It is also saving us on infrastructure costs and has helped optimize infrastructure usage, like storage space. By using Commvault we have saved about 3 TBs of space.

We have used it to recover data when there was a problem with our database. It took about four hours to bring the data back. But recently, we introduced HA and it has saved us more time. With HA the data can be brought up in one hour. With other solutions it would take 10 to 24 hours.

We do monitor all the backups using the user interface. It is user-friendly, easy to navigate, and easy to create solutions with it. It is very comfortable. We can do multiple operations at a time.

We use Commvault Command Center for backups and restores and for the creation of new clients. We use it for other functionalities as well. In terms of VMware, I can go directly to the Command Center, enter VMware, and I can search it directly. Command Center is very useful and it can be used for more advanced techniques.

The cloud support is good. The on-premises cloud is working for us as is traditional cloud. All the clouds we're using are working with Commvault. We have Office365 and Azure.

I need documentation for Azure backups. One expectation that I have is regarding PDF documentation. When I was trying to browse the documentation, I could not locate that. The documentation should be in PDF format where it can be downloaded easily.

I have been using Commvault for the past five years.

The stability has been good. We haven't had any issues.

Scaling can be done easily.

I am now looking into an orchestrator. High-availability is another future use case for us.

We do not have any issues with support. Everything is fine. Commvault helps in fixing any issues and they help us to deploy the data whenever we need help. And they provide the security as well.

In the first year we raised many issues, but now it is easier for us to manage. We refer to the documentation.

We used to use Rubrik but we found Commvault to be a better solution. It provided time savings, handled more complexity, and provided more security.

With guidance from their team, and based on the documentation, it was easy to install. The deployment took one-and-a-half hours.

There are updates every quarter and they are getting easier to deploy.

We have about seven staff members on my team, IT analysts, who handle the solution, to account for different shifts and meal breaks, etc. Within the company there are 10 clients using it, mostly within IT.

We are very satisfied. It is a very useful product, daily. 

Commvault is constantly developing new use cases based on customers' requirements. They are developing new features on a regular basis. In version 11, 19 new features were added. For example, in previous versions we did not have the Command Center and whenever backups failed we could not restore the data. Now, there are options for restoring the data. These kinds of advanced techniques are introduced from day to day.

We use it in the most traditional way: for backup and restore. We don't use it for all the other things that are also possible with it because we are quite a big company. We have all the specific tools we need for specific purposes.

We tested Commvault in the past for archiving, but in those days it was not really stable yet. So we selected other solutions for that.

We use Commvault on everything. We are using it in our own data centers but also in the cloud. We use Azure for most things, but we also are working on testing some things on AWS.

The benefits to our company are the performance and scalability and the willingness of Commvault to connect to talk with us about any requests we have for changing the product, and to do understand what we're looking for. If possible they also implement these things in quite a short amount of time. If a new feature is needed, or it should be doing A instead of B, they're always willing to listen to requests and build them. That's great.

The fact that the solution is a single platform has enabled our company to accelerate growth and drive innovation. We're using it in a traditional way but our resources and services are moving to the cloud. It helps that the way the product works, what we are used to doing in the traditional way on-prem, can be done the same way in the cloud. That makes it easier overall and makes the transition easier.

There are ways the solution helps our admins to minimize the time they spend on backup tasks, but in some ways, the solution doesn't. But that's more related to our way of working and not related to Commvault. Using it saves us about 40 hours in a month, thanks to its automation features.

In terms of saving on infrastructure costs, in our environment that's not measurable because we have a dedicated platform and dedicated infrastructure for it. But we see the benefits of the deduplication. It's saving petabytes in our environment.

The backup and restore activities are valuable and being able to use it in a hybrid space. You can easily back up on-prem and restore to the cloud and vice-versa. The scalability is also good.

The solution's interface is easy to use. For manageability, it doesn't matter where the resource is coming from or going to. That's the great power of the Control Panel: It's easy to use and does not matter if you manage on-prem or cloud resources.

Commvault works quite well as it is. But we are an MSP, so for us it's fairly hard to customize it for branding it.

There is also room for improvement in the multi-tenancy and security. That's been a hard thing for us and for Commvault as a vendor. Sometimes it's hard to implement new features in multi-tenancy environments. The new features are great, and it's good that they are there, but they are not always usable in an MSP environment.

The solution's breadth and depth of cloud support are good but could be better. Some cloud features that are common-sense, especially on AWS, are not completely integrated yet in the product. They are a work-in-progress. Overall, cloud is moving and innovating also very fast. That also makes it very hard for Commvault to comply with all the new features. Sometimes a cloud provider like Microsoft changes something and a feature is broken in Commvault.

We have been working with Commvault as a backup product for about 12 years now. As an MSP, it's very hard to switch from vendor to vendor. But the solution also works great. We have no real reason to switch to another product at this moment. We are always looking at the competitors, but not all the competitors can comply with all the things that we need.

It is very stable. We have some little issues with it, but when we have issues they're always related to the application we want to back up, not to the product itself. We ask a lot of the product; we use it in a fairly hard way on several things. Sometimes we hit the boundaries of the product and we encounter issues. But in day-to-day business, we don't see any real issues related to the infrastructure or the load we can give it.

It scales very well. If we need more capacity or more power for performance, then we add additional nodes without needing to do a complete redesign of the product or the environment. We can easily add extra power.

We have about 10,000 clients running with approximately 2 petabytes of data being backed up. That will double in the upcoming year to two years. We also have about 1,000 end-users of the product and most of them are doing restore activities.

Their technical support is very good.

But a hard thing for them is understanding how to work with an MSP. They assume, sometimes, that as an MSP, we have access to everything. But that's not the truth and it's not possible. That makes troubleshooting hard for us and for them as well. But they are quite fast in responding and try to help as quickly as possible. Still, most of the cases that we have with customer support need to be escalated directly to development.

We previously used an IBM solution. The main reasons we switched to Commvault were cost and complexity.

The setup of Commvault was complex but that's related to our environment. As an MSP we have very high security guidelines, so that made it hard. But that's not related to Commvault, it's related to our security environment.

Our deployment took almost a year. We had to make sure our design was good before we did anything. Most time of the implementation time was in the design phase. The actual building-up of the solution was quite fast. We were done in a month, starting from scratch.

For deployment and maintenance we need four to five people who are backup system admins.

We did it by ourselves.

We have seen ROI in several respects, but not as fast as we want.

We look at everything on the market. Every year to two years we do a new evaluation of the new techniques and products. We are always comparing it with Veeam, for example. We have Veeam running in several places. We test the two solutions and compare the results with each other.

Out-of-the-box, the manageability is one of the big differences. For end-users, sometimes Commvault is too complex and, while it's getting better and better with the latest versions, it is still not there. The most important thing is what my end-users say to me about using Veeam. It's very straightforward, easy-to-use, and does what it needs to do. Veeam and other competitors are point solutions. They are very good in specific situations and specific environments.

On the other hand, Commvault is a product that can manage a lot of things, and most competitors don't have the scalability and the large support-matrix for as many products, versions, and applications. Commvault allows us to use one product for almost everything. It's better than the competitors. We want to have everything in a single console, if possible, and that's what Commvault does for us.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using Commvault is to take your time. Especially in complex environments, the design stage takes a lot of time, but you need to do it well. Otherwise, you will have trouble in your implementation. We learned that the hard way. We wanted it built fast but, when the design was ready, we needed to rebuild several times.