There are white lies, black lies, gray lies, and then that special fourth category: lies before expanding into a new technology space. When Veeam Software Inc. started, it was focused on being the best virtualized product for VMware Inc. Then along came 2016.

“We finally admitted that we’ve been lying to our customers for 10 years,” said Ratmir Timashev (pictured), co-founder of Veeam, recalling a series of announcements starting in 2016. “We’d been saying that Veeam is VMware only … we will never do physical. Last year we introduced a comprehensive end-to-end platform to do everything: virtual, physical and cloud.”

Timashev spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at the VeeamOn event in Chicago. They discussed Veeam’s move into intelligent data management, its intent to dominate the multicloud world, and the company’s legendary parties. (* Disclosure below.)

A ‘hyper’ data world

After establishing itself as a leading specialist in backup technology for virtual servers, the company pivoted into backup for the physical server world as well. In the evolving era of information management, Veeam’s view of the data ecosystem is characterized by its co-founder as totally “hyper,” as in hypercritical, hypersprawl and hypergrowth.

“This leads to creating a new type of solution, what we call intelligent data management,” Timashev said. “We’re not standing still. We’ve added lots of capabilities in terms of protecting cloud, native cloud, Amazon Web Services, Azure, as well as physical servers.”

Veeam’s shift means refocusing its message from the VMware administrator to enterprise infrastructure management. The company’s own research shows that the average enterprise loses over $10 million per hour due to poor data protection, according to Timashev. Veeam intends to do something about that.

“We won the first battle, the battle of the on-premises, highly virtualized model data center,” Timashev said. “For us the next two or three years are the most critical in dominating this multicloud world for the next decade.”

Veeam’s co-founder was looking forward to attending the company’s legendary VeeamOn party in Chicago this week. “Culturally, we still remain a young, entrepreneurial, spirited company,” Timashev said. “We like to party and work hard.” And he’s not lying.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the VeeamOn event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for VeeamOn 2018. Neither Veeam Software Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE