Veeam Software Inc.‘s user event, VeeamON, running May 22-25 in Miami, is an important one because Chief Executive Anand Eswaran (pictured) has been at the helm for almost a year and a half and has now had time to put his fingerprints on the company.

Looking back, it has been a successful year for Veeam, as it was named a leader in the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup and Recovery Software Solutions, six years running, with the highest ranking on the ability to execute scale for the third consecutive time.

Also, the company achieved the No. 1 share position in IDC’s tracker for Data Replication and Protection. According to IDC, in the second half of 2022, Veeam grew 8.1% year-over-year and reported revenue of just under $700 million, which equates to a 12% share of the overall market. At the same time, Dell shrank about 2%, which puts it at 11.2% share or $652 million. This is a topic that Dave Vellante, Dave Nicholson and I discussed on TheCUBE at VeeamON 2022 when Dell and Veeam were in a virtual tie for market share.

What’s fascinating about the overall market is that the largest share line in IDC’s tracker is “others,” which currently comprises 53% of the overall market. This means there is a tremendous amount of opportunity for any of the vendors that can drive innovation into the market, with Dell and Veeam moving in opposite directions. Innovation in this area would include both traditional backup and recovery but emerging use cases.

Based on that, here are some topics I expect to see at VeeamON 2023:

Innovation in ‘the basics’

There are a lot of adjacent areas for backup and recovery, but it has been a struggle for this industry to make the process of recovering files easy. I’ve often joked that the backup and recovery industry is filled with vendors that are excellent at backing up data but can’t make the recovery process easy, but this is where Veeam shines. Earlier this month, I talked to Eswaran. He told me that the No. 1 thing Veeam customers like about the company is “reliable recovery,” where getting data back is fast and easy, which has been a “rallying cry” for him and the company. The event content will likely reflect this.

Ransomware recovery

There has been no bigger driver of advancing backup and recovery than its role in helping companies recover from ransomware. The Veeam Ransomware Trends report found that in 2022 85% of organizations had at least one ransomware event or attempted attack. One option is to pay the ransomware, and I have talked to plenty of organizations that have done this, but that doesn’t guarantee the return of data. The only way to ensure one can recover quickly is to employ a “3-2-1-1-0” backup strategy. I believe the 2023 study from Veeam will be released at VeeamON, so we should see where the gaps are.

The Veeam platform approach

Over the years, Veeam has built a broad set of capabilities that enhance its core offering. In addition to backup and recovery, the company offers monitoring, analytics, and orchestration capabilities. Also, it can back up data from any computing model, including cloud, virtual, on-premises data, local applications, and SaaS. If this were “Lord of the Rings,” Veeam might call this the “one backup platform to rule them all.” At VeeamON ‘22, the company touched on the platform advantage, but this is an area I’m hoping to see more of.

Kubernetes

In late 2020, Veeam acquired Kasten to target Kubernetes-native workloads. At the time, Kubernetes was highly hyped but lightly used. Today, the broad use of containers has accelerated the adoption of Kubernetes. One of the challenges of containers is that they are ephemeral in nature, making them difficult to back up. Kasten was a big part of VeeamON 2022, and I’m expecting to see more in this area to help customers safely ramp up the use of Kubernetes.

Cloud-a-palooza

Backing up Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform has driven growth for Veeam. One might think cloud services do not need to be backed up since it’s something the cloud provider should be doing, but that’s not the case. Although the cloud providers do offer backup solutions, they tend to be basic in capabilities when compared with those from Veeam. Also, one can’t use AWS to back up Azure or GCP to back up AWS, meaning companies need to manage multiple systems. With Veeam, it’s one platform, one set of policies and a single management console. This is an area of constant innovation, and I expect to see how Veeam has adapted its platform as cloud companies have evolved.

Zeus Kerravala is a principal analyst at ZK Research, a division of Kerravala Consulting. He wrote this article for SiliconANGLE.

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