‘We deliver the full chain’: Veeam CRO and CMO talk Broadcom-VMware, cloud ambitions, and AI integration

CRN met with John Jester and Rick Jackson to discuss the future of cyber resilience, Veeam’s partner ecosystem, and Veeam Data Cloud

“With the right partner, with the right roadmap, and with the right tools, you can accelerate your security journey.”

These were the words Anand Eswaran, CEO of Veeam, used to kickstart the latest edition of VeeamON, the vendor’s conference in San Diego, California.

As the channel’s needs constantly evolve, the company that claims to be 100 per cent channel focused wants to build a future that benefits both Veeam and its partners.

To find out what partnering firms should expect from the Seattle-based company in the foreseeable future, CRN spoke with John Jester, CRO at Veeam, and Rick Jackson, CMO, about distribution, VMware, and the importance of SMBs.

You mentioned strong momentum behind Veeam Data Cloud and Cloud Vault. Can you talk us through where that’s coming from?

Jester: “We launched [Veeam Data Cloud] about five quarters ago, and we cracked over $50m (£37.7m) in ARR last year on Veeam Data Cloud.

“Then we brought out Cloud Vault in November, and in just four months, we’ve signed over 1,800 customers.

“There’s been a tonne of momentum and pipeline building.

“I’d say there was pent-up demand for consuming Veeam as a SaaS service rather than on-premises.

“We’ve seen that demand really explode with the release of Veeam Data Cloud - it’s what I’d call the fastest-growing, hottest product for us right now.”

And Cloud Vault is part of that same shift?

Jackson: “It’s definitely growing fast. We’re still doing a lot of broader VDC business, but Vault is taking off. It’s that ‘easy button.’

“Rick mentioned 1,800 customers; we’re now over 2,000 customers using Vault.

“A lot of them already had storage set up, but now they’re looking at Vault and saying, ‘Okay, I can start to unwind all that.’ It’s not always a flick-the-switch moment, but it’s happening.

“It’s cost-competitive, more secure, and managed. Because we’re doing it at scale across customers, it ends up being a no-brainer.”

What pushed you to launch Veeam Data Cloud in the first place?

Jester: “Customer demand.

“People told us they wanted to consume Veeam as a SaaS solution - they didn’t want to buy servers, set them up, administer them, or run software on-prem.

“That need was even stronger when it came to protecting a SaaS workload like Microsoft 365 - they wanted to protect SaaS with SaaS.

“That drove us to build the cloud platform.

“Cloud Vault came from a similar place. Customers told us, ‘We need a simple, immutable way to leverage public cloud.’

“Some were already using AWS, Azure, or GCP, but were worried about misconfiguration, immutability, and whether they were setting it up properly.

“We took all of that away. It’s now just a dropdown in the product - pre-configured, secure by design, immutable by design.

“The current product runs on Azure.

“Our partnership with Microsoft means we can offer pricing that’s competitive, sometimes even better than if customers went to Azure directly.

“It’s a higher-value service at a competitive cost.”

Where are you seeing demand for Vault geographically?

Jester: “It’s global.

“I’d caveat that by saying some markets have a higher propensity for public cloud than others – and that correlates to how the hyperscalers have expanded.

“In EMEA, the UK was a faster mover than Germany, for example.

“Not that Germany doesn’t buy cloud - but the cloud-first mindset took off faster in the UK.

“In APJ, Australia and New Zealand moved earlier, India was slower.

“In the US, public cloud demand is high.

“Even within a country, it can vary by industry.

“Government might lean toward private cloud, while manufacturing and retail are quicker to adopt public cloud.

“Vault is doing well across all three regions: EMEA, APJ, and the Americas.”

Next: Veeam’s response to the Broadcom-VMware situation...

You seem to have a strong appetite for cloud, especially with Vault and Data Cloud. Is any of that a reaction to VMware’s acquisition by Broadcom and the fallout from that?

Jester: “It’s a complicated topic.

“Yes, Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware came with significant licensing changes.

“They drove the cost way up, and that’s caused customers to look at their options.

“Now, most customers aren’t going to just lift and shift all their VMware workloads.

“That’s expensive and difficult. But what we’re seeing is this: Customers are saying, ‘I’ll keep my existing VMware estate, but I’m not going to put any new workloads there.’

“Instead, they’re placing new workloads in public cloud, and that shift is what’s driving demand for Cloud Vault, Veeam Data Cloud, and also benefiting the hyperscalers.

“So yes, the Broadcom-VMware situation is a factor in the growth we’re seeing.

“It’s accelerating customer movement to cloud, and that supports all of our cloud motions.

“Even for customers who are still on VMware - Cloud Vault is still compelling.

“And there’s no doubt that customers are unhappy. We showed a stat in our session: 23 per cent of customers said they are very likely to move off VMware, and another 33 per cent said they are somewhat likely.”

Jackson: “ One of the big things we’re seeing from those customers who are likely to move is that they’re not necessarily abandoning virtualisation - they’re just abandoning VMware.

“They’re still planning to run virtualised applications, but on other platforms.

“That’s why we’ve accelerated our development to cover other virtual environments - whether that’s Red Hat, Oracle, Proxmox, or Microsoft.

“We’ve focused on bringing all those platforms up to parity so that customers have real choice.”

Jester: “That’s where data portability becomes critical.

“It’s one of our strongest advantages - you can back up from VMware and restore to something else.

“That gives customers a real path forward, and it’s something our partners are using to support those migrations.”

Are you helping customers with that transition away from VMware?

Jackson: “A lot of customers want to stay virtualised but not on VMware, so we’ve accelerated our development to support other virtual environments, such as Red Hat, Oracle, Proxmox, or Microsoft.

“We’ve brought them up to feature parity, and our architecture means we can back up from VMware and restore to any of those.

“That’s huge - it makes moving off VMware much easier.”

Continue reading to hear about Veeam’s channel strategy and SMB play...

What’s the place of distributors in your channel strategy?

Jester: “We’re a 100 per cent two-tier channel model - distributor to VAR.

“We’ve got over 200 distributors, and more than 90 per cent of our business goes through channel.

“The only variance is through hyperscaler marketplaces.

“Customers can buy Veeam Data Cloud via the Azure marketplace and use their cloud commit.

“We still pay our partners incentives, but the transaction doesn’t technically flow through them.”

Are you still focused on SMBs in addition to enterprises?

Jester: “That’s probably on me; we tend to talk about what’s new, which is usually enterprise, but we started in mid-market and SMB is still a massive part of our customer base.

“We’ve got 550,000 customers globally.

“The majority by customer count are mid-market and SMB. By revenue, yes, enterprise is bigger - but that doesn’t reflect volume.”

Jackson: “And if you removed enterprise entirely, we’d still have dominant market share in SMB.

“We’ve built a high-volume, transactional model, and our partner ecosystem lets us reach deep into small businesses.”

How do you make your solutions accessible for SMBs with little to no IT resource?

Jester: “Our 35,000 active partners aren’t just signed up - they’ve transacted.

“Especially in Europe, small and mid-size customers often rely on partners to recommend and manage solutions.

“We invest heavily in partner enablement because it’s our best route into SMB.”

Jackson: “And on the product side, our success is built on ease of use. Small businesses don’t want servers - they want cloud-based, simple-to-deploy tools.

“Veeam has always been known as easy. ‘It just works’ was our tagline for years.”

Jackson: “That’s also why we work closely with MSPs and VCSPs - they deliver Veeam as a service.

“They’re serving those 20 to 50 employee businesses by managing the whole thing for them.”

Read on to hear how Veeam is using AI...

Do you face pushback around licensing complexity?

Jester: “Not really, our universal licence simplified things significantly.

“If we get pushback, it’s mostly around customers who bought perpetual socket licences years ago and don’t want to move to subscription.

“We created the enterprise licence agreement (ELA) to help with that - it’s flexible, predictable, and scalable. It makes the transition smoother.”

And finally, how are you using AI?

Jackson: “We’ve built Veeam Intelligence into the product.

“It’s like a domain-specific assistant - not just a chatbot.

“You ask natural language questions, and it helps you diagnose, understand, and respond in your environment.

“That’s live today. But where it gets even more exciting is what we’re doing in BDC - using backup repositories as training datasets.

“For example, imagine being able to ask: ‘How has the tone of internal emails changed over the last year?’ That’s powerful business insight, from protected backup data. Not runtime, not production - but a rich dataset we already have.

“And that’s where a lot of our R&D is heading next.”