Data protection provider Veeam Software Corp. has been on a steep ascendency of late. In fact, during the kickoff of the VeeamON event this week, the company revealed it was statistically tied for first place in the data protection market with industry behemoth Dell Technologies Inc.

On the back of its success, the company is charting a path that will cater to software as a service, multicloud, and containerization solutions.

“During the keynote, [Veeam] mentioned that they’re now tied at number one for backup and recovery,” said Zeus Kerravala (pictured), founder and principal analyst at ZK Research. “I think it’s safe to say Veeam does data protection really well.”

Kerravala spoke with theCUBE industry analysts Dave Vellante and David Nicholson at VeeamON, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the market movements around cloud data protection and backup and recovery solutions. (* Disclosure below.)

New avenues to conquer

Now that Veeam has hit the #1 spot in its market, what’s next? Because the company does backup and recovery, arguably, better than any other company, according to Kerravala, it’s time for Veeam to continue evolving.

“How do they … move into other adjacent markets to go create not just a backup and recovery company, but a true data management platform company that has relevancy in cyber and analytics or artificial intelligence and data warehousing,” Kerravala asked. “All those other areas I think are really open territory for this company right now. “

Another notable highlight of this year’s event was Veeam embracing a thought leadership role outside of just being a solutions provider. Consequently, one of the ideas the company touched on is the reactive approach the industry has adopted to ransomware attacks.

“I think Veeam’s trying to change that mentality a little bit,” Kerravala explained. “You know, if you have the right strategy in place to be more preventative, you can do that. You can protect your data and then restore it right when you want to. So you don’t have to be in that big bucket of companies that frankly pay and actually don’t get their data back.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the VeeamON event:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the VeeamON event. Neither Veeam Software Corp., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE