Veeam Plays MatchMaker for Online Backup with Veeam Cloud Connect

Veeam is looking to win the hearts and minds of companies seeking an alternative to traditional backup and replication services by introducing them to the world of cloud-based, always-on recovery.

There’s only one problem: Veeam doesn’t possess a cloud capable of storing all of their customers’ data.

While this would be an instant deal-breaker for many other companies looking to compete in the backup market, Veeam will act as a middleman to help customers find the best cloud service provider to fit their needs. Instead of directly providing customers with the resources needed to backup and store their sensitive data to the cloud, the company will connect them through its “Veeam Cloud Connect” program.

“We are not a cloud provider ourselves,” said Matt Kalmenson, vice president of sales, service and cloud providers at Veeam North America. In an interview with Talkin Cloud, he added, “We enable our service providers to offer various cloud services, and we enable our end customers to send their backup copy jobs and replication over to a service provider, so we’re completing the ecosystem.”

Like many companies such as Uber or AirBnB, Veeam cuts down on the cost of doing business by providing the infrastructure necessary to perform replication services—in this case, Veeam Cloud Connect—and allows partners to set up their own cloud deployments based off of its customizable cloud console.

The process, according to Kalmenson, is fairly simple; customers with on-premise storage deployments look at a list of available service providers through the Veeam console and choose the one they want. By acting as matchmaker, Veeam is able to facilitate the connections between customer and partner while receiving a cut of the profit, and all without having to build out any of their own infrastructure.

Several partners have praised Veeam for their hands-off approach to cloud backup, including Jordan Jacobs, vice president of products for SingleHop, a Chicago-based cloud infrastructure provider. By utilizing Veeam Cloud Connect, Jacobs said SingleHop is able to help customers set up a cloud account within minutes by filling out a form on the company’s website. The rest of the process is automatically managed for them, allowing customers to focus on backing up the data where it is needed.

“I think Veeam is one of the few companies where we have a real, true partnership,” said Jacobs. “Veeam has always kept things simple, and we love that.”

Another Veeam partner, Rochester, NY-based OffsiteDataSync, said it has acquired about 500 new customers since adopting Veeam Cloud Connect last year. Once customers are registered using Veeam Cloud Connect, OffsiteDataSync allows them to configure their IP addresses and decide on their level of storage tiers without having to do additional legwork.

“They have been a very supportive partner,” said Matthew Chesterton, the CEO of OffsiteDataSync. “What I really like about Veeam is they are responsive, they address the issues and … They make sure we’re taken care of as partners.”

So far, the program seems to be off to a successful start. Veeam reported a 75 percent uptick in customer transactions last year, following the launch of Veeam Cloud Connect in October. The company recently launched Veeam Availability Suite v9, which includes Veeam Cloud Connect Backup and Veeam Cloud Connect Replication for Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS).

Going forward, Kalmenson said Veeam will focus on capturing more of the DRaaS market as customers continue to turn to the cloud for asset protection and replication.

“We didn’t create the backup and replication marketplace … [but] we feel that we really kind of redefined that market by bringing new capabilities to this ‘always on’ enterprise,” he said. “There are some incumbents out there but we not looking looking to compete with those incumbents … we are taking a different approach.”