Developing innovative availability solutions

Sunaina Rana / EMIRATES BUSINESS

Veeam Software was established in 2006 by college roommates, Ratmir Timashev and Andrei Baronov in Baar, Switzerland. Timashev went from being a grad student in chemical physics at The Ohio State University to the CEO of his own start-up, Aelita Software. After seven years of leading the company, alongside Baronov, to virtually double-digit growth each year, the company was sold to Quest Software for US$115 million, which is now a part of Dell.
Gregg Petersen, current Regional Director, Middle East and SAARC, Veeam Software, “Partners Timashev and Baronov then invested their own money and without any outside VC funding founded Veeam. Veeam Software was created to provide similar systems management solutions for virtualised server infrastructures, leveraging the trend that built software companies like VMware and Microsoft into fast growing multi-billion enterprises.”
Back in 2006 Timashev recognised the big need and trend in virtualisation and realised a great opportunity to build a software company. Veeam currently has 37,000 ProPartners and more than 183,000 customers worldwide.
In 10 years time, Veeam has grown to the company with 2000+ employees, has developed the portfolio of innovative availability solutions, which have won more than 80 professional awards. The release of Veeam Availability Suite proved to be successful, with more than a third of Veeam’s customers upgrading within the first 60 days. It’s a testament to the strong demand for solutions that can deliver 24/7 data availability.
“With more than 10 million virtual machines worldwide, ensured by Veeam availability solutions, the company is transforming the modern data center by bringing together virtualisation, cloud and storage technologies,” added Petersen.
As per the company’s FY 2015 results, it reported record total bookings revenue of US$474 million, a 22 percent increase over the previous fiscal year, and 34 percent year-over-year revenue growth in enterprise orders. The annual results show that enterprises are embracing Veeam’s innovative approach of delivering availability solutions, which enable SLAs (service level agreements) for RTPO (recovery time and point objectives) of less than 15 minutes for ‘ALL’ applications and data. This continued growth is a testament to the success of Veeam’s vision and execution, carrying the company toward its goal of US$1 billion in annual revenue by the end of 2018.
“Veeam recognises the new challenges companies across the globe face in enabling the always-on enterprise, a business that must operate 24/7/365. To address this, Veeam has pioneered a new market of availability for the modern data center by helping organisations meet recovery time and point objectives (RTPO) of less than 15 minutes for all applications and data, through a fundamentally new kind of solution Veeam Availability Suiteleverages virtualisation, storage, and cloud technologies that enable the modern data center to help organisations save time, mitigate risks, and dramatically reduce capital and operational costs,” he stated while talking about the companies prospect.

Regional network
Veeam’s Middle East Headquarters is in Dubai Internet City, Dubai, UAE, in addition, the company has an office in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. From these two offices, Veeam serves the GCC, Levant, Pakistan and Afghanistan with the support of channel partners.
Petersen said, “Veeam revenues keep rising consistently, showing in 2015 a year-on-year growth of 50percent across the Middle East compared to the previous year, in line with consistent growth since entering the market in 2011.”
In 2013 being challenged to enhance KSA channel, Veeam invested into hiring a local team and driving forward channel marketing initiatives in conjunction with its distributor in KSA. The effort proved worthwhile and in 2015 the company registered a revenue growth of 80 percent in Saudi Arabia as compared to the previous fiscal year.
A commitment to constantly upgrading channel programme allows Veeam to ensure its partners always give their customers the best possible capabilities, while making the best margins for themselves. Veeam has been investing into channel with very attractive promotions to keep partners motivated at every turn. The total number of ProPartners in the Middle East stands at 950.
In the last few years, Veeam has had tremendous success in the O&G, banking, government and education across the entire region. At last count, Veeam customer base grew by 30 percent in 2015 compared to the previous year totaling in over 1600 customers; Electronic Government Authority of Ras Al Khaimah, GASCO and ARGAS are some of the premier customers.
The paramount goal of Veeam is to build upon the success the company so far in the region and grow the customer base. Closely tied to this is evolving in to a ‘non-touch business’. To that end it will continue to invest in their partner network and enable them to perform end to end sales. Veeam is a marketing engine and building brand awareness and educating enterprises will continue to be a focus for FY 2016.
“Furthering our commitment to the region, we plan on adding resources as well as opening new offices in this area in the next year,” he concluded.