Veeam Boosts Data Backup Features for AWS, Veeam Orchestrator

Data backup vendor Veeam is giving partners and customers more tools to protect business data and speed disaster recovery operations.

During its VeeamON 2020 virtual conference, the company unveiled new versions of Veeam Availability Orchestrator and Backup for AWS. Thursday’s event also included details on expanded capabilities for Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 coming in the third quarter.

The latest Veeam Availability Orchestrator (v3) gets full recovery orchestration support for NetApp ONTAP snapshots and additional DR features. Also unveiled is a new, less fully featured disaster recovery pack to help customers begin to use orchestration services.

Veeam Orchestrator automates manually intensive processes and helps use dormant data, the company said. The latest version provides intelligent orchestration and testing for business continuity, disaster recovery and data migration operations.

By providing orchestration support for NetApp ONTAP snapshots, version 3 lets users monitor IT service continuity.

Veeam Backup for AWS v2 Unveiled

Also announced is the latest version of Veeam Backup for AWS v2, which comes seven months after v1 debuted. Veeam Backup for AWS brings AWS-native Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) backup and recovery to customers. It is available through the AWS Marketplace in free, paid or bring-your-own-license versions. It can run as standalone AWS backup and DR or can integrate with the Veeam platform.

There are also other enhancements; for instance, replicating and recovering Amazon Elastic Block Store snapshots across AWS accounts and regions. It also integrates with the new changed block tracking (CBT) API to shrink backup windows, and compute and storage costs.

Veeam also improved its AWS Partner Network (APN) clout by reaching AWS Storage Competency status. That means Veeam has demonstrated significant success helping customers with their AWS deployments and data backup services.

The latest release of Veeam Backup for AWS is now available.

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 v5

Also getting feature updates is Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v5, including new native APIs for Microsoft Teams backups. The updates will allow companies to protect Teams data as well as channels, settings and tabs. Fast recovery and data restores are also included, as well as granular search capabilities. Expect Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 v5 to be available next quarter.

Kevin Rooney, vice president of Americas partner sales for Veeam, told Channel Futures that all the new features aim to help partners better serve their customers.

Veeam’s Kevin Rooney

“Everything we do in the company, from product development to marketing, it always has the channel in mind,” said Rooney.

The company’s has an overarching message for partners: It always works to make its products more robust, said Rooney.

“Veeam Backup for AWS v2 is a perfect example of that, coming only six months after its previous version.”

Veeam partners and customers play an important role by participating in features planning and providing input and feedback, he said.

“Partners have been asking for these features,” said Rooney. “They’re looking for what their customers are asking for, which is complete flexibility, whether in the cloud, on-premises or wherever.”

The new data backup features around Microsoft Teams show …

… the company’s responsiveness, said Rooney.

“Look what’s happened since the COVID-19 pandemic — all of us have been using Teams,” he said. “We are using it as our only way to meet. A lot of our customers are doing the same thing. The growth around Microsoft 365 has been immense, and that means it needs backup.”

Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 is already Veeam’s fastest growing product and the pandemic is increasing that business, he said.

“It’s what customers are looking for,” said Rooney.

Acquisition Reaction

The new products come five months after Veeam’s $5 billion acquisition by venture capital and private equity firm Insight Partners. That purchase has so far been very positive for the company, partners and customers, said Rooney.

“Insight has come in and said, ‘How can we invest more heavily in our partners?’” he said. “All they have done since they acquired Veeam has been to look for more business opportunities. They’re looking to add things at all times. It’s certainly been to the benefit of our partners.”

One Veeam channel partner, Matt Sirbu, director of data management and data center infrastructure for solution partner and MSP Softchoice, said the broadened Veeam products will help his company provide improved services for customers.

Softchoice’s Matt Sirbu

“Ultimately, it doesn’t make sense to have different or multiple backup and high availability solutions for each cloud,” said Sirbu. “To better drive efficiencies, you want one platform that can extend across all those clouds, the data and the environment. This helps us because we can use the Veeam programs to build out our own services that cover those clouds. That allows us to be more agile and support more customers, using the same tool for public and private clouds.”

The new data backup features also help his company expand its conversations with its customers, Sirbu said.

“Data protection is different than disaster recovery and high availability, but they are two sides of the same coin. We can now help customers protect their environments in public and private clouds; then, Orchestrator can establish business continuity plans. In this COVID-19 world, customers realize the importance of having protection and availability plans that are working in tandem.”

Chris Webber, an analyst with IDC, said Veeam’s messaging about flexible and reliable products resonates well.

“The ability to realize an ROI in a shorter window” is important to customers, he said. “And there are not the same level of implementation and integration requirements that are associated with many solutions. That is very attractive for multisite deployments and SMBs.”