Kate Mollett, regional manager for Africa at Veeam.

Backup and disaster recovery firm Veeam says its business model is agile and responsive to the unique requirements presented by the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

The software giant says with governments across the globe instituting lockdown regulations and companies introducing remote working policies, business continuity is more important now than ever before.

SA is in day 22 of the nation-wide lockdown, with most businesses forced to either halt operations, or rely heavily on remote working to ensure business continuity, which is expected to result in a blow to the country’s fragile economy.

As local IT departments face increasing pressure to make sure data remains available and protected at all times, Veeam has re-affirmed its commitment to maintaining business continuity and data protection of physical and multi-cloud infrastructure for local customers during the lockdown phase.

Kate Mollett, regional manager for Africa at Veeam, told ITWeb that nothing is more important to the company than the health and safety of its employees and 66 000 channel partners, and innovative use of technology has enabled the company to continue its operations in SA and abroad.

“We have imposed a remote-work policy globally, including in SA. This is not unusual for Veeam as the majority of our staff work remotely. Veeam has offices in more than 30 countries and over 4 200 employees globally.

“It is inspiring to see how creatively our teams are managing working from home – from meetings to interactions with partners via Microsoft Teams. Being a leader in the IT space means there is a heavy reliance on our products and services during this period,” notes Mollett.

Last month, private equity firm Insight Partners completed its $5 billion acquisition of Veeam, after entering into a definitive agreement, following an investment at the beginning of 2019.

The Veeam acquisition comes as the company cemented its status as a billion-dollar software firm after it exceeded $1 billion in annual revenue bookings last year.

Under the ownership of Insight Partners, Veeam is moving its headquarters to the US from Switzerland, while continuing its global expansion.

The next phase

In the past decade, Veeam has created a huge market for virtualised environments, predominately through its VMware vSphere backup and availability solutions, and has become a dominant player in the market – as part of Veeam’s Act 1 business strategy, according to Mollett.

While the market has changed over the years, backup still remains critical for businesses, and arguably more important than ever as customers move to the Act 2 phase – hybrid cloud.

With approximately 50% of its business coming from theEMEA region, Mollett says the acquisition will play a key role in enabling the company to meet the second phase of its business strategy for 2020/2021.

“The acquisition will enable Veeam to accelerate Act 2 of our strategy, which is our evolution into hybrid cloud. Veeam is now a US company committed to continuing our global expansion. EMEA remains an important market to Veeam.

“According to the latest IDC Semi-Annual Software Tracker, we have the largest market share in EMEA. Customers are building hybrid cloud environments and our strategy for the hybrid cloud is poised to deliver growth in all our markets, including EMEA,” she notes.

The acquisition was followed by the company reshuffling its executive team. William H Largent, who previously held the role of EVP of operations at Veeam, was promoted to CEO, while Danny Allan was promoted to CTO, from his previous role as VP of product strategy. Gil Vega, previously MD and CISO at CME Group, was appointed as CISO.

Veeam says at the core of its strategy is delivering simplicity, flexibility and reliability to its customers worldwide. The company recently released the Veeam Availability Suite v10, which has new backup, disaster recovery and security capabilities.

Its new solutions, along with the new leadership team, will help the company extend its position into the US, where it aims to leverage growth opportunities for cloud data management in the enterprise, Mollett points out.

According to Veeam, 72% of organisations across the globe are looking to embrace cloud data management and are transitioning to cloud strategies, and data security remains a huge concern.

“Africa is one of the most targeted continents by cyber criminals. With the significant number of cyber attacks annually, it remains a challenge for most African organisations to be ahead of the game and ensure they have the right level of security which is rigid enough to ensure utmost security and maintain an always-on environment,” concludes Mollett.