‘Enterprise is our biggest target market’: Veeam SVP and GM EMEA
Tim Pfaelzer sees the UK as having “the biggest growth potential”
During VeeamON 2025 in San Diego, the vendor reiterated its focus on partners, and that it is a “100 per cent” channel focused.
CRN attended the event and had the chance to sit down with Tim Pfaelzer, SVP and GM of EMEA, who shares his ambitions for EMEA and its broadening customer base.
He identifies the UK, France, and Germany as being the company's main revenue drivers in the region.
In the UK, Veeam recently appointed Drew Gardner to take the vendor “into hyper-growth in enterprise.”
“The UK has the biggest growth potential among the top three,” he explains.
“Beyond those, the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, is the fastest-growing region.
The company currently counts around 20,000 partners across EMEA, 1,100 of which are in the UK.
“The biggest criticism I always get is ‘Where is our opportunity to make money? You have so many partners.’
“The thing is, our partner programme is built on pay-for-performance; the more you sell, the more money you can earn.”
In the region, VARs still represent Veeam’s most important partners in terms of revenue and volume.
“That’s how we started 19 years ago: through VARs who added value and services.
“The second biggest group is Veeam cloud service providers (VCSPs).
“They offer our software as a service via multi-tenancy, etc.
“GSIs are still growing.”
The organisation also works with big partners in the likes of Softcat, Bytes, Computacenter, Bechtle, as well as “niche ones” in defence, public sector, and manufacturing.
“The breadth lets us pick the best partner for each scenario.”
While the company grew as an SMB/commercial company, it started going after enterprise about eight years ago.
“That required a lot of product development to ensure we could protect all workloads regardless of data type, infrastructure, or cloud provider.
“We’re now almost complete in covering all enterprise workloads, so enterprise is our biggest target market.”
Pfaelzer adds that the vendor has already reached 70 per cent of the Global 2000.
The company also remains open for more M&As.
“We assess whether it’s better to buy, build, or partner - it depends on what best serves the customer.
“We’ll make those decisions when the time is right.”
The executive says it highly values MSPs, according to the executive.
“They’re essential.
“If I were a customer, I’d look at my requirements and evaluate the market.
“I might choose to build it myself, or get it as a service.
“MSPs have deep experience delivering these services.
“If it’s a compelling event or a commercial no-brainer, then going MSP makes sense; it saves internal resources.”
Pfaelzer is keen to highlight the concrete investments that Veeam is making in the region, having hired around 1,250 to 1,300 employees in the region - 800 in sales, 400 in renewals, and others in marketing and various sectors.