Channel drives record APJ growth for Veeam

Shaun McLagan (Veeam)

Veeam Software has delivered record growth across Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), driven by an expanding channel base across the region.

During FY18, the data management vendor posted 36 per cent growth in APJ - the highest globally - alongside 32 per cent growth in Australia and New Zealand.

Other key regions include Japan and China, as partners deepen capabilities across an expanding cloud data management market.

“It was a great year for Veeam and we are very proud of the 36 per cent growth in APJ – currently, the fastest growing region for Veeam,” said Shaun McLagan, senior vice president of APJ at Veeam. “Our hyper-growth regions, Japan and China, led the way with each growing more than 100 per cent.”

According to McLagan, such success was dependent on a thriving partner ecosystem.

“The success is testament to our strength in being a 100 per cent channel company with great alliance relationships, the united Veeam Team in APJ, and a product suite that meets the demands of today’s data management challenges,” McLagan added. “We saw significant growth in every sector - from SMB to commercial, enterprise and cloud.

“The adoption of multi-premises and multi-cloud strategies will be the foundation of Veeam’s data protection and backup offerings this year. We are investing significantly in the region and expect to see similar growth this year.”

Cloud gains

Globally speaking, the vendor - fresh from a $500 million investment from Insight Venture Partners and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) in early January - delivered $963 million in total bookings, posting 16 per cent growth year-over-year.

Such figures represent the 12th consecutive year of organic double-digit bookings growth, adding 48,000 new customers in the process.

Furthermore, Veeam also plans to invest heavily in its research and development (R&D) capability, with a $150 million investment in a new Prague facility.

Delving deeper, the vendor’s cloud and service provider (VCSP) segment grew 23 per cent year-on-year, reaching 21,700 cloud service providers, globally, 3,800 of which are licensed to provide cloud back-up and disaster-recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) using its cloud connect platform.

The cloud business has been the fastest growing segment for the vendor, which saw a 46 per cent growth year-on-year in its overall cloud business for 2018, marking the eighth consecutive quarter this sector has led growth for the company.

In addition, Veeam subsidiary, N2WS, which provides cloud-native backup and disaster recovery for Amazon Web Services (AWS) saw annual recurring revenue of 83 per cent year-on-year.

“Opportunities of data management, compliance and risk, data theft and cybercrime, are expected to continue to present businesses with challenges throughout 2019, and into the next decade,” said Ratmir Timashev, co-founder and executive vice president of sales and marketing at Veeam. “What we have seen in 2018 is that no data is entirely secure.

“Customers are looking for an approach to manage data that unlocks its use and potential to drive business transformation but does not lock their data into one vendor or increase their risk exposure.”

Alliance strategy

Within the past 12 months, Veeam was also recognised twice as Microsoft ISV Partner of the Year, generating 1.9 million hours of Microsoft Azure consumption every month.

The vendor also expanded the success of its NetApp alliance from product integration to a full resell agreement that includes NetApp Data Fabric solutions, alongside a global resell agreement.

Likewise, Veeam moved closer to Lenovo in a move designed to offer customers integrated solutions combining high-performance storage with trusted data protection which is sold directly from Lenovo and its resellers in a single transaction.

“We are leading the industry by empowering businesses to do more with their data backups, providing new ways for organisations to generate value from their data, while solving other business opportunities,” said Timashev. “Veeam has yet again achieved consistent company growth and profitability in this transformative market of data management in Hybrid-Cloud - and Veeam will continue to dominate.

“Together, with our partners, customers and alliances, and with our recent announcement of general availability for new cloud data management capabilities as part of Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 Update 4, our most important product launch in company history, we have solidified our position as the dominant leader in intelligent data management and one of the largest private software companies in the world.”

However, 2018 was not without incident, with the vendor embroiled in a major controversy, exposing 445 million customer records on an open server from Amazon Web Services, blaming the leak on “human error”.

As reported by Channel Asia, the error was uncovered by security researcher Bob Diachenko, who found an exposed Veeam MongoDB containing 445 million records, equating to 200GB of data.

The exposed database contained information on marketing leads, including names and email addresses.

Partners and customers were informed that the leak was due to “human error”, according to a statement attributed by co-CEO Peter McKay, who subsequently issued an apology for the incident.