‘We talked about [being] number one in market share. What I love is that we’re actually expanding and accelerating that share even more. But I just wanted to say none of it happens without you. That momentum is actually powered by you. You know, Veeam has always been a partner-first company,’ says Veeam CEO Anand Eswaran.
When Veeam CEO Anand Eswaran and several other members of his executive team took the stage during the partner kickoff portion of Veeam’s VeeamON conference held last week in Las Vegas, his message to the company’s channel partners was clear: Take advantage of Veeam’s No. 1 market share and its cutting-edge technology to grow their business.
Veeam, which has become a top, if not the top, provider of data resilience and data protection technology, used the VeeamON conference to introduce such new technologies as Veeam’s Data Resiliency Maturity Model, or DRMM, which is aimed at helping businesses develop strategic actions to close the gap between their perception of their cybersecurity capabilities and the reality of how well they are actually prepared, as well as its first backup and replication appliance.
However, Eswaran told partners, technology alone does not guarantee success.
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“As we engage with enterprises, it’s not just technology,” he said. “It is helping them understand where they are and helping them understand what the path is to know what best-in-class resilience looks like.”
Eswaran also reinforced the fact that Veeam is a channel-focused vendor. He also said that Microsoft 365 was a “salmon run” for partners where the opportunities for new business come to them as easy as salmon comes to bears standing in a river.
“Microsoft 365 is one workload which is past the inflection point of being consumed as a service,” he said. “Every on-prem Microsoft 365 user you migrate to VDC doubles your ARPU (average revenue per user) instantly. And if you do really well, like we have in probably 15 to 20 percent of customer transactions, we triple ARPU because we get on-prem users to either VDC Flex and double your ARPU or VDC Premium and triple your ARPU. This is the definition of land and expand.”
There’s a lot going on with Veeam and its push to use its channel to grow both its and partners’ business. Click through the slideshow for more of what Eswaran had to say.
Photo courtesy @ChernogorovPhotography
Partner-First All The Way
Eswaran and his executive team stated several times during the VeeamON conference that Veeam is by far the No. 1 provider of data protection and resilience technology in terms of revenue, according to an April report from IDC, and attributed that success to the channel.
“We talked about [being] No. 1 in market share,” he said. “What I love is that we’re actually expanding and accelerating that share even more. But I just wanted to say none of it happens without you. That momentum is actually powered by you. You know, Veeam has always been a partner-first company. A partner-first company. And will always be a partner-first company. You basically drive everything we talk about. So I want to say on behalf of all the Veeamers here, thank you for your trust. Thank you for the execution. Thank you for being with us every step of the way. We wouldn’t be a success as a company as it is today without what you do for us every single day. So thank you.”
Incredible 2024 Leading To A Better 2025
After realizing $1.75 billion-plus in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in 2024, Veeam now sees a super clear path to breaching $2 billion in ARR before the end of 2025, Eswaran said. He shared a number of what he called “signals” that lead to his optimism for 2025, including:
- First, Veeam Data Cloud is expected to quadruple in size this year from when it finished in 2024.
- Second, Veeam Data Cloud Vault is and will continue to be the company’s fastest-growing product. “Every single thing we do, every transaction we do, every customer conversation we have, Veeam Vault should be a part of that,” he said.
- Third, Eswaran expects partners to make 70 percent of new sales of his company’s flagship Veeam Data Platform, or VDP, to be either the advanced or premium versions. About 60 percent of new sales were the advanced or premium versions, he said.
- Fourth, Eswaran said million-dollar-plus sales in ARR to customers are growing at three times the rate of the rest of the business.
- Fifth, he said Veeam expects to double the number of customers using Veeam for more than one workload. “In the last 18 to 24 months, we added close to 10,000 customers who added one more workload to what they did with Veeam, and we see the ability in the next 12 months to have 20,000 customers who at least add one more workload to the work they do with Veeam,” he said.
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Veeam Data Cloud Vault A ‘Big Deal’
Veeam Data Cloud Vault, the company’s secure cloud storage technology leveraging Azure Blob Cool Storage functionality, is a big deal, Eswaran said. Veeam currently protects more than 20 exabytes of data which, based on the average yield of Vault, translates to a $6 billion opportunity if every exabyte were protected with the technology.
“Now customers are going to have their data centers,” he said. “They’re going to have options, choices. But even if you assume 15 percent of them start to use Veeam Vault, that is still a multibillion-dollar opportunity. Huge. And that is even before we monetize the AI services on top of it, which will be an opportunity for us. So Vault is the zero-trust easy button, pre-secured, pre-configured, and a huge opportunity.”
New Focus On VCSPs
Veeam in the third quarter is also planning to release Vault for its VCSPs, or Veeam Cloud and Service Providers, Eswaran said.
“Every new VDC product which we launched will be available on day one for the VCSPs, not the delays you’ve been seeing historically,” he said. “By the way, even those delays are never a reflection of the lack of importance. It was just that technically, you launch it and then you make sure you extend it. Starting Q3, every single workload will be available on VDC (Veeam Data Cloud) day one for VCSPs. So that is huge. So for Vault, it’s a no brainer. Its low-effort, high-impact, multi-billion-dollar opportunity lifts the ASP (average selling price) on every single deal. Make Veeam Vault the default in everything you do, every new sale, every new renewal, every new customer, this is the easy button.”
Win With The Enterprise
With the introduction at VeeamON of Veeam’s Data Resiliency Maturity Model, or DRMM, comes a major way for channel partners to expand their reach into the enterprise, Eswaran said.
“As we engage with enterprises, it’s not just technology,” he said. “It is helping them understand where they are and helping them understand what the path is to know what best-in-class resilience looks like. … We have well over 2,400 customers who spend more than $100,000 with Veeam, and with you,” he said. “We have several hundred million-dollar-plus customers, and the key is that they are growing three times faster than the average growth rate of the business. The one thing which I hear all the time from all of them is the cost of recovery using Veeam is a meaningful differentiator. And so as you engage with your customers with Veeam, as we do that together, the cost of recovery should be an absolutely critical part of your early conversations. And now with DRMM, you have an even better way. It’s a boardroom conversation starter.”
The Microsoft ‘Salmon Run’
For channel partners, Eswaran said, Microsoft 365 is a “salmon run,” referring to the annual salmon migration where the sheer volume of fish passing by makes it easy for predators to hunt them. Microsoft already has millions of active users of Microsoft 365, but in the past six years less than 15 percent of those users are protected, he said.
“Now with Microsoft actually sharing how important it is for every company to look at their Microsoft 365 data, and have a data resilience plan for that, I predict that the next 15 percent … will take 12 to 18 months, not the 60 to 70 months it took. That is what I mean when I say the salmon run. Veeam already protects more than a third of this market. That is huge. So we are the outright market leader by a significant mile. So start with Microsoft 365 with every conversation you have with your customers. And while you’re at it also package Entra ID with every Microsoft 365 opportunity. We jointly announced Entra ID with Microsoft. Huge opportunity, Microsoft 365 and Entra ID with every single user, every single customer you have. High value, easy attach.
Furthermore, Eswaran said, VCSPs who bring Veeam Data Cloud to Microsoft 365 customers get increased margin and customer stickiness.
“Microsoft 365 is one workload which is past the inflection point of being consumed as a service,” he said. “Every on-prem Microsoft 365 user you migrate to VDC doubles your ARPU (average revenue per user) instantly. And if you do really well, like we have in probably 15 to 20 percent of customer transactions, we triple ARPU because we get on-prem users to either VDC Flex and double your ARPU or VDC Premium and triple your ARPU. This is the definition of land and expand. This is a huge salmon run already happening right now, with 50 [million] to 60 million users up for grabs in the next 12 [months] to 18 months.”
