Veeam demonstrates its ambitions and capabilities

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1 Veeam demonstrates its ambitions and capabilities Publication Date: 14 Jul 2016 Product code: IT Roy Illsley

2 Ovum view Summary The market for data protection and availability is undergoing a significant change. It is moving away from the scheduled backup and recovery approach based on making copies of the data kept in different silos. The shift is toward a more continuous data protection and availability approach. The vendors in this new space are still emerging, and different solutions use different technologies. Veeam has been disrupting this business for the past eight years, but now it is becoming one of the establishment and is driving the market in new directions. In this report Ovum examines how Veeam sees the new market, how it is positioning itself, and what this vision means for organizations in terms of data protection. Veeam sees the cloud as the future Veeam is known for its competence in protecting the virtualized environment of both VMware and Microsoft Hyper V. Last year it announced its Cloud Connect and Veeam Managed Backup Portal for Service Providers. This enables the deployment of Veeam Availability Suite on-premise at a customer's site to be managed through the portal. In addition, if the service provider is using the Veeam Cloud Connect solution, it can back up the customer's data to the Microsoft Azure cloud. The second new product is a free Linux workload-backup capability. This enables customers to secure Linux workloads running in public cloud environments as well as on-premise. Ovum believes that this a sensible addition, because Linux servers are complex to back up, and an increasing number of cloud workloads are based on Linux. While these current capabilities demonstrate a recognition that the cloud is an important new market, not all cloud possibilities are covered. Veeam s own market research of its customer base showed that 56% of its customers currently do not use any public cloud. Of the 44% that are using public cloud, Microsoft Azure and AWS with 14% represent the top two public cloud providers, and the only other provider of significance, VMware vcloud Air, with 6% was third most popular. However, Veeam s partners have a different mix of public cloud provider partnerships. These results were somewhat strange considering 85% of Veeam s customers are using VMware, and 15% use Microsoft Hyper V. However, Veeam s partners reported that 41% have an active partnership with Microsoft Azure, while only 24% work with VMware vcloud Air, and 20% with AWS. Veeam s research also showed where its customers are planning to invest in cloud computing in the next 12 months. Backup and DR as a service were the top two use cases, which matched the feedback from Veeam s service provider partners where these were also the top reasons for then selecting Cloud Connect. Managing the practicalities of providing DR is now a target for Veeam Veeam Availability Orchestrator (VAO) is its first solution designed specifically as a platform to enable greater automation of backups and replication. In version 1.0 the focus is on disaster recovery planning, which Ovum s research shows on average US companies spend 4% of the IT budget on, and for the most part this spend provides a less than perfect DR capability. The major issue for a DR Ovum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. Page 2

3 plan is the ability to test the plan so the business has confidence that when needed the IT systems can be restored in the agreed timeframe. VAO is scheduled for beta testing in the late summer and goes on GA at the end of 2016/beginning of It is a version 1.0 product so it is not a comprehensive DR planning solution. However, it does provide an excellent starting point for organizations because it includes the three core capabilities needed: build the plans, test the plans, and document the plans. The building of a comprehensive DR plan requires any solution to understand the concept of sites and how multiple sites are managed, and to achieve this from a single pane of glass with a role-based administration overview. Providing this holistic visibility combined with granular element management is essential for the complexities of a DR plan to be accommodated, while making the execution management as simple and easy as possible. VAO uses the concept of VM groups to act as the building blocks for plans, these VM groups require access to the corporate knowledge base, typically held in a CMDB, so that business rules can be applied. In VAO version 1.0, Veeam has built in open integration with leading third-party CMDBs and uses its Business View technology to apply the rules. The final element in any DR plan is how it is tested and documented. VAO uses a library of plan templates in Microsoft Word that automatically update as the plan changes and alerts people via when a change occurs. The automated testing is driven from this documentation and uses Veeam s Virtual Labs technology to enable these plans to be verified. For a first version of a DR planning solution, VAO is pretty comprehensive. Its only weakness is it does this for only vsphere environments in version 1.0, but Veeam will expand this over time. For organizations that use vsphere, VAO represents a good way to approach DR planning. Veeam demonstrates why it is a company for the digital economy Veeam made some significant management restructuring at its recent inaugural analyst event in Napa California. Ratmir Timashev co-founder, CEO, and president announced he was standing down from his roles of CEO and president to focus on strategy and acquisitions. The new COO and president is Peter C McKay, most recently senior vice president and general manager, Americas, at VMware. Veeam also named William H Largent, currently executive vice president, as its new CEO. McKay has impressive credentials, after joining VMware through the acquisition of Desktone where he was president and CEO from 2010 to October The new structure will see McKay report to Largent, and he will be responsible for sales, sales operations, marketing, finance, and human resources. Ovum believes that splitting the roles of president and CEO and the fact that one of the founders is standing aside as leader demonstrates a maturity of thinking. Organizations that are growing as fast as Veeam must be flexible and make management changes at critical points in the journey. Ovum believes that when Veeam becomes a $1bn company the structure will change again. With this target in mind, Veeam remains on track to become a $1bn run rate company by 2019, which is 12 months later that initially predicted (due to currency fluctuations). It currently protects 11.1 million VMs out of an estimated global 50 million, and has 193,000 customers, and is acquiring new customers at a rate of 4,000 per month. These statistics are an impressive demonstration of how Veeam has expanded since its first product release in However, despite these figures, Veeam is not a traditional organization in its operations. It is highly distributed, with many of its employees Ovum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. Page 3

4 working from multiple locations. It says it has a culture of can do rather than the traditional office-bound micromanaged approach that can stifle innovation. Appendix Further reading How to set up a data protection and availability plan in 2016, IT (July 2016) IT Source: Author Roy Illsley, Principal Analyst, Infrastructure Solutions roy.illsley@ovum.com Ovum Consulting We hope that this analysis will help you make informed and imaginative business decisions. If you have further requirements, Ovum s consulting team may be able to help you. For more information about Ovum s consulting capabilities, please contact us directly at consulting@ovum.com. Copyright notice and disclaimer The contents of this product are protected by international copyright laws, database rights and other intellectual property rights. The owner of these rights is Informa Telecoms and Media Limited, our affiliates or other third party licensors. All product and company names and logos contained within or appearing on this product are the trademarks, service marks or trading names of their respective owners, including Informa Telecoms and Media Limited. This product may not be copied, reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Informa Telecoms and Media Limited. Whilst reasonable efforts have been made to ensure that the information and content of this product was correct as at the date of first publication, neither Informa Telecoms and Media Limited nor any person engaged or employed by Informa Telecoms and Media Limited accepts any liability for any errors, omissions or other inaccuracies. Readers should independently verify any facts and figures as no liability can be accepted in this regard readers assume full responsibility and risk accordingly for their use of such information and content. Any views and/or opinions expressed in this product by individual authors or contributors are their personal views and/or opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views and/or opinions of Informa Telecoms and Media Limited. Ovum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. Page 4

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