Veeam's strategy for modern data protection

I never imagined that when I left Nth Symposium in November 2019 that it would be my last business trip and event in over two and half years so I couldn’t be more excited to be on my first business trip and event since then. I’m in Las Vegas for one of my favorite events, VeeamON. I’ve have been at every VeeamON since they started doing it here in Las Vegas in 2014.

My day 1 agenda started with attending the media breakfast *. Danny Allen, Chief Technology Officer and SVP for Product Strategy hosted the discussion. I was hoping to learn more about the details of Veeam v12 but the official announcement of that is coming tomorrow so there was not part of the discussion. Danny gave an overview of Veeam and set up what the focus of day 1 is: the future of modern data protection.

There are three pillars Veeam sees in their business:

1. Ransomware protection 
2. Cloud acceleration
3. Backup modernization

My take

Look, ransomware is a huge topic. And in fact, Veeam’s latest research says that 76% of customers have had at least one attack. However, Danny acknowledged during the Q&A that ransomware is just one kind of disaster but nonetheless, leading with ransomware is going to be something we will continue to see as a message to get customers' attention. Do customers need to be concerned about it? Absolutely but data protection and disaster recovery is a far bigger topic than the current ransomware focus.

The other thing that is curious to me and is a priority for me to understand is Veeam’s stated goal of “cloud acceleration”.  Again, customers are moving some workloads to the cloud but I think we’ve exited the “cloud first” stage the industry was in and we’re in a “hybrid cloud first” stage. Some apps make total sense to be in the cloud but research I’ve seen says 70% of apps are still on-premises. And the customers that were cloud first a few years ago are repatriating some of their data and apps back to on-premises or to a colo. My view is that cloud first is dead.

What do I want to get out of the rest of VeeamON?

Over the next couple of days, here’s what I want to better understand:

• Veeam Backup and Replication v 12
• What is HPE talking about in the HPE booth – planning on podcast about this.
• Dummies guide to Kasten by Veeam – hoping to get some time with Michael Cade for a short podcast on this.
• General state of things at Veeam – I’ll be talking to Dave Russell, VP of Enterprise Strategy and hope to turn that into a podcast or maybe video.

Dive deeper

Here are a few things for you to check out where you can read more about what I’ve briefly discussed here:

• VeeamON day 1 press release.
• Veeam report Ransomware 2022 (note that registration is required).
• Veeam press release from “day 0” with Kasten K10 v5.0 news.

* Veeam sponsored bringing me to VeeamON but did not review or comment on my article before I published it.