Today’s announcement that the VMware Cloud is now live on AWS made a lot of hybrid cloud fans very happy, as the partnership paved a smoother road for information technology administrators who want to run applications on-prem and in the cloud. One of the happiest fans of the VMware Inc.-Amazon Web Services Inc. deal may well be Peter McKay (pictured), co-chief executive officer and president of Veeam Software Inc.

“That’s music to our ears. Customers are getting comfortable that it’s going to be a hybrid story,” McKay said.

McKay appeared on the set of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, and spoke with co-hosts Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Lisa Martin (@Luccazara) at VMworld 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. They discussed Veeam Software Inc.’s continued growth, the company’s partnerships with VMware and AWS, the critical role of data management, and the challenges in keeping the culture intact. (* Disclosure below.)

Adding 4,000 customers per month

Veeam continues to ride a strong wave of demand for its availability and backup products. The company is seeing 35 percent year-over-year growth, with 256,000 current customers, according to McKay. And, Veeam is adding 4,000 customers per month and is closing in on $1 billion in revenue.

“Steady and up into the right is our business,” he said.

Veeam has been expanding its ecosystem of late. Last week, Cisco Systems Inc. added Veeam to the company’s Global Price List, which will allow Cisco partners to resell Veeam backup software this fall. Earlier this summer, Veeam and Nutanix Inc. expanded their partnership to include new availability solutions and support.

The VMware-AWS deal news this week comes on the heels of Veeam’s own announcement at its VeeamON event earlier this month that it would be integrating more closely with AWS. Partnerships have emerged as a key component of Veeam’s strategy and enabled the company to move quickly.

“That’s why we were able to do it faster than anybody,” said McKay, who indicated that Veeam already had products based on the VMware-AWS news up and running at VMworld.

The announcements out of VMworld this week highlight the increasing importance of finding the right technology formula to manage data. “More companies are leveraging data in almost every aspect of their business,” said McKay, who called data “the currency of digital transformation.”

Veeam’s rapid rise is not without challenges, and one of those has been keeping the company’s culture intact while bringing in new people with the necessary skill sets to fuel growth in a highly competitive market.

“We call it hungry, humble and smart people,” said McKay in describing Veeam’s culture. “We’re aggressive, and scrappy, but no egos. A big part of my job is to make sure we don’t lose that.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of VMworld 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for VMworld 2017. Neither VMware Inc. nor Veeam Software Inc. have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE