Veeam announced the availability of Veeam Availability Console, a free management console for service providers delivering Veeam-powered services, such as Backup as a Service and Disaster Recovery as a service, to more efficiently manage, track and invoice for these services. In addition, the Veeam console expands opportunities for resellers and new managed service providers looking to launch a managed backup service business to capture new revenue streams.
Veeam Availability Console can also be used by distributed enterprises operating in an IT service delivery model and wanting to offer efficient, centrally managed backup, data protection and disaster recovery services across a distributed multi-cloud environment including on-premises or private cloud, public cloud, remote and branch offices as well as mobile or home workforces.
As cloud adoption grows, the ability to deliver, manage, and monitor IT infrastructure can be difficult. Veeam Availability Console simplifies this and allows Veeam service providers to add value by provisioning, managing, and monitoring Veeam virtual, physical, and cloud solutions for their customers. This in turn enables these partners to generate new revenue streams by offering fully-managed BaaS and DRaaS alongside their traditional business lines.
Veeam Availability Console license is free, fully supported for Veeam Cloud and Service Provider partners. Service providers interested in using the free solution are invited to join the VCSP programme, which is free to join and requires no obligation to purchase paid Veeam solutions.
Key features of Veeam Availability Console include:
- Simplified customer onboarding, with ability to centrally provision and manage all customers in one place
- Remote network discovery of customer environments to deploy Veeam’s virtual, physical and cloud-based Availability solutions;
- Supports virtual, physical and cloud-based servers and endpoints
- Remote management and monitoring of Veeam backups and replicas for customers in a dashboard view
- Tracking, billing and invoicing to ensure complete, real-time visibility of consumed resources, with white-label invoices
- Self-service management and status monitoring using a multi-tenant portal by partners and end-customers
- RESTful API to easily integrate Veeam Availability Console functionality into existing management portals and workflows, and automating common management tasks
Regional channel partners
Veeam has a 100% channel-based business model, with its skilled ProPartners a major factor in Veeam’s overall success. During 2017, Veeam’s Middle East operation made a number of key developments to fuel this growth with its reseller community, including:
- Direct investment in channel pre-sales engineers to assist partners with enablement and development of projects
- Veeam Partner Academies, which are a series of half day and full day workshops, co-hosted along with a distributor, to increase knowledge and ability to sell Veeam solutions
- Roll out of the Veeam Loyalty Programme, which rewards resellers for net new business sales, offering points which they accumulate for deals closed
- Demand generation tactics to fuel ProPartner pipeline. The CIO Race Days hosted at the Yas Race course in Abu Dhabi is one such initiative.
- During 2018, further sales and channel enablement is planned in the region, with a focus on training to upskill resellers to enable them to own the entire pipeline of a customer journey, from initial inception to a full install and satisfied customer.
Vendor alliances
Veeam is a 100% channel organisation and committed to partner success. Veeam has just achieved the advanced tier partnership level with Amazon, delivering Availability for data on AWS with existing and future integrations into Amazon S3, Amazon Glacier and Amazon EC2.
Cisco added Veeam to its global price list making it possible for partners to easily quote and configure Veeam and Cisco datacentre solutions from a single ordering system and providing customers a simplified way to consume the joint solutions with a single purchase order. Veeam and Cisco provide joint solutions to replace legacy backup solutions, to maximise the investment of converged infrastructure systems by adding Availability solutions and to help customers modernise their datacentres through their digital transformation initiatives. Veeam is the only vendor that offers snapshot integration with Cisco HyperFlex delivering faster backups without impacting production systems dramatically lowering RPOs.
More than $14M in Veeam revenue has been generated since the HPE resell agreement less than one year ago. Because of Veeam’s ability to support the majority of HPE product platforms, Veeam is being sold in larger and more complex solution-driven deals.
Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 Update 3 adds integration with IBM Spectrum Virtualise, including IBM Storwise, IBM SAN Volume Controller and as a software option on other supported storage offerings. Veeam leverages customers’ investment in IBM storage by orchestrating IBM FlashCopy snapshots to simplify and streamline backup and recovery with less impact on the production environment. Veeam integration with IBM Spectrum Virtualise includes Veeam Backup from Storage Snapshots, Veeam Explore for Storage Snapshot, and Veeam On-Demand Sandbox for Storage Snapshots.
The success of the Veeam and Microsoft Alliance is predicated on driving Azure consumption. Veeam is a mechanism for Microsoft to move workloads to Azure, delivering archiving, recovery, and Office 365 Exchange to the Microsoft cloud. Integration points include Veeam Availability Suite + Microsoft Azure, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365, and Veeam Agent for Linux.
NetApp will be adding Veeam Availability Solutions to the NetApp global price list in February, 2018. NetApp customers can purchase complete Veeam and NetApp solutions directly from NetApp and its resellers in a single transaction, enabling enterprises to leverage both 24x7x365 availability and IT simplicity. Veeam’s direct integration with ONTAP enables organisations to ensure the Availability and protection of their critical applications and data across the NetApp Data Fabric.
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure has become one of the fastest growing segments of the enterprise infrastructure market. This is pivotal for companies like Veeam, which are embracing multi-cloud environments. And now, Veeam is the Premier Availability solution provider for Nutanix virtualised environments. In addition, Veeam is adding support for Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor in Veeam Availability Suite. This support will now allow both Nutanix and Veeam customers to benefit from its enterprise-class Availability solution.
With the recent addition of Veeam’s Universal Storage API framework, Veeam and Pure Storage are collaborating on integrating Veeam Backup and Replication with Pure’s storage snapshots. This integration is planned to be available early next year and will provide businesses with the ability to leverage storage snapshots for significantly improved RPO and reduced infrastructure impact, delivering an even higher return on their IT investments. Pure Storage integration with Veeam Availability Suite provides a cohesive data protection strategy allowing Veeam to protect workloads running on Pure Storage’s all-flash array — then directing those backups to a repository of your choice.
During VMworld, Veeam announced that that Veeam Availability Suite will soon be available to customers of VMware Cloud on AWS. This support will allow VMware Cloud on AWS technology partners to enable customers to deploy the same proven solutions seamlessly in both the public and the private cloud. The announcement also reaffirms Veeam’s commitment to delivering Availability for any service, across any platform. Veeam was recently named as one of eight VMware Global Strategic Technology Partners.
- Key takeaways
- In Q3 2017, the Middle East region had +86% YoY growth in total bookings revenue and +97% YoY growth in new license bookings
- Technologies designed for the client-server era cannot deliver the 24x7x365 Availability, which agile businesses demand
- Because of Veeam’s ability to support majority of HPE product platforms, Veeam is being sold in larger and more complex solution-driven deals
- Veeam has extended its data protection to VMware and Hyper-V
- Veeam currently has more than 2,600 customers in region, with 69% net new customers added YoY, and nearly 1,200 new ProPartners at 54% YoY growth
Global and regional outlook
In fiscal 2016, Veeam’s global revenue was $607M with a 27% YoY growth. New global enterprise license bookings grew at 57% annually and new enterprise customers grew at 48.6%. At 267,500 global customers, Veeam continues to average 4,000 new global customers per month. Q3 2017 was Veeam’s 37th quarter of double digit growth and market share gains from legacy backup providers.
In Gartner’s Backup and Recovery Marketshare Report 2016, Veeam was ranked #4 globally, surpassing legacy backup providers. Similarly, within IDC’s Software Tracker, Data Protection 2016, Veeam was positioned with the top four vendors, as well as the overall momentum leader.
Technologies designed for the client-server era cannot deliver the 24x7x365 Availability, which agile businesses demand, including the ability to restore any IT service running in the hybrid cloud within seconds and minutes. Veeam has extended its data protection to VMware and Hyper-V.
The Middle East is one of the fastest growing markets for Veeam since its inception in 2011. Veeam In Middle East, currently has more than 2,600 customers in region, with 69% net new customers added YoY, and nearly 1,200 new ProPartners at 54% YoY growth. In Q3 2017, the Middle East region had +86% YoY growth in total bookings revenue and +97% YoY growth in new license bookings.
Gregg Petersen, Regional Sales Vice President, Middle East and Africa, Veeam Software, said: “The Middle East continues to be a fast-paced growth region, with high levels of innovation and people eager to adopt technologies that drive digitisation and ease the burden of growing data management tasks. These ambitions complement our technology proposition, of enabling businesses in the Middle East to deliver the digital life experience users expect with robust levels of data availability.”
Saudi Arabia and UAE, the two countries that have traditionally been the highest revenue contributions for Veeam within the region, will continue be critical to Veeam’s future success. The ongoing focus on Smart Cities, Saudi’s Vision 2030 where technology is key to the country’s National Transformation Programme, the World Expo 2020 in Dubai, plus trends such as cloud computing, big data, virtualisation, security and mobility, make it clear technology has a vital role to play in the Middle East for many years to come.
These factors only serve to fuel Veeam’s ability to play a big role in the region’s digital transformation by assisting government agencies and enterprises to remain Always-On businesses. Recent major customer wins show momentum in high-level projects, including: Dubai Duty Free, Jumeirah Group, Al Naboodah Group Enterprises, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, Electronic Government Authority of Ras Al Khaimah, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, Dubai World Trade Centre UAE, Abu Dhabi Gas Industries UAE, Arabian Geophysical and Surveying Company Saudi Arabia, OSN UAE.
With high double-digit growth figures in revenue and new customers, and with recent announcements of Availability Console and vendor alliances, Veeam appears well set to drive sales through its channel partners.