Veeam Has Had a Huge Year Making Good on the Promises it Made in 2017
Gregg Petersen, the Regional Vice President at Veeam Software speaks to Arabian Reseller about the company’s key announcements at the recently concluded VeeamON Forum ME and its plans for 2019
What was the VeeamON Forum ME all about this year?
The VeeamON Forum ME was designed to connect the biggest industry players and experts with an unrivalled opportunity to learn how to embrace Intelligent Data Management. In a world where data is pouring in from every click, transaction and Internet of Things (IoT) device, it’s not enough to collect, store and protect it all. Today’s business demands data that is active, intelligent and available 24/7. VeeamON Forum 2018 was the only event in Dubai where IT leaders experienced this first-hand.
What were the key announcements at the event?
This year, the company provided an insight into market trends and key challenges facing enterprise data, such as hyper-criticality, hyper-growth and hyper-sprawl, and shared best practices on how Veeam solutions can help businesses meet these challenges while achieving high availability for all applications and data. In addition to the powerful keynotes, attendees had a chance to interact with other Veeam customers, network with thought leaders and subject matter experts, and hear from alliance partners.
How was the reception at VeeamON Forum ME this year?
We’ve had a huge year making good on the promises we made in 2017. We’ve expanded our resales relationships with Cisco, NetApp and HPE. We’ve unleashed the second iteration of our killer data management product for Office 365, so we are now supporting Outlook, Sharepoint and OneDrive, ensuring data is protected beyond what Microsoft does.
Twelve months ago, we expanded our operations in the Middle East, moving to an office that was over double the size of our previous home here in Dubai. This year we’ve focused on growing the team, building out those relationships with alliance partners and developing the relationships with enterprise-size businesses that we want to work with.
We’ve had some great successes, particularly in the banking and finance sector too, but because we’re more than just backup and are now considered by those businesses as a data protection or data management partner, many of those clients now see us as a bit of a secret weapon and ask that we don’t do press together. It’s a positive (that we’re getting the business), but we’d also dearly love to explicitly tell you the media about the work we’re doing, but we can’t. We’ve got a very exciting update coming in early Q1 FY19 for our Veeam Backup and Replication.
What are Veeam’s goals and strategies for 2019 and beyond?
Veeam has a tremendous opportunity ahead. We are already the leader in Intelligent Data Management, and as we focus on closing out another record year, we are looking ahead to achieve our long-term bookings objective, which is to reach more than $2 billion by 2022. As technologies like IoT, AI, machine learning and blockchain mature, and as customers grapple with mining massive amounts of data for better business insights, they need solutions that can do far more than ensure data Availability.
We believe Intelligent Data Management is the new requirement in today’s enterprise. The Veeam Hyper-Availability Platform, used by many of the world’s largest enterprises including Royal Caribbean, Mercedes-Benz, Telefonica and L’Oréal, is the most complete solution to help customers on their journey to Intelligent Data Management so that they deliver innovative digital services to market faster. Veeam is now ranked number two in the Middle East backup market and we are on our way to becoming number 1 so that is our primary goal.
What new products and solutions is Veeam planning to launch in the first half of 2019?
In 2018, we switched to a more agile system of product development, mirroring those of the best of breed storage vendors we now closely integrate with. Instead of the annual big bang, we will deliver smaller updates more often to better respond to the changing asks from our customers, based on their ever-evolving IT requirements. I think it’s no secret that Veeam Backup and Replication 9.5 is going to have an update in the first half of the year, but for the rest, you’ll just have to wait and see. Our product development and R&D teams have been working hard.