Veeam says partners can start offering cloud services in under ten minutes

Veeam Software, which delivers availability for the modern data centre, has shared which Veeam Cloud Provider (VCP) partners will support Veeam Cloud Connect on the same day the Veeam Availability Suite v8 becomes generally available, planned for later this quarter.

Veeam Cloud Connect, part of the new Veeam Availability Suite v8, gives Veeam customers a fully integrated, secure and efficient means to move backups to an offsite backup repository managed by the service provider of their choice, avoiding the upfront capital investment of their own offsite infrastructure. Service providers get a simple, powerful platform to deliver fast and secure backup to the cloud for over 111,500 Veeam customers. In fact, Veeam says Cloud Connect is so simple to set up, any Veeam ProPartner can become a service provider and offer offsite backup repository services to their customers in under 10 minutes.

“Veeam’s approach to the cloud is to enable VCP partners to provision services that address customers’ needs while also enabling partners to extend their own business offerings. It is not to build our [Veeam’s] own cloud as so many legacy backup vendors have attempted to do,” said Ratmir Timashev, CEO of Veeam. “Our partners are closer to our customers and have built deep relationships as trusted advisors. Veeam’s role is to empower partners to deliver the highest quality off-site backup services, and with the new Veeam Availability Suite v8 and Veeam Cloud Connect, they have access to a market-leading portfolio which helps them do just that.”

“It’s impossible to talk about IT modernisation without talking about the cloud, especially when it comes to data protection and disaster recovery,” said Jason Buffington, Senior Analyst at ESG. “Increasingly, the cloud is becoming an integral part of enterprise and SMB data protection and disaster recovery strategies. It’s imperative that at least one copy of a backup live off site and the cloud fulfills that requirement.”

Veeam recommends that IT organisations follow the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of data on two different kinds of media, one of which is off site. Veeam Cloud Connect enables IT to satisfy the offsite requirement without having to invest in offsite infrastructure or management, since cloud resources are available on demand.

Both current VCP partners and new Veeam service providers have the opportunity to leverage Veeam Cloud Connect to grow their customer base and recurring revenue streams. Basic setup provides all the infrastructure management capabilities a service provider needs to offer an offsite backup repository service to customers. A combination of storage and compute makes it possible to efficiently store large backups in the cloud. 

Veeam also gives VCP partners the ability to offer fully managed D2D2C (disk-to-disk-to-cloud) backup solutions, which back up to local disk first before sending the backup offsite to the cloud. Many of these VCP partners also offer disaster recovery planning, testing and recovery services.

The Veeam Cloud Connect platform for service providers is scheduled for general availability in Q4, 2014, at the same time as Veeam Availability Suite v8 and Veeam Backup & Replication v8. Pricing is per virtual machine (VM), and varies by the region. Veeam Cloud Connect components that allow Veeam customers to connect to offsite backup repositories are included in all editions of Veeam Availability Suite v8 and Veeam Backup & Replication v8 at no additional charge.  

The select VCP partners supporting Veeam Cloud Connect on day one of general availability of Veeam Availability Suite v8 can be found here. A random search found providers for Australia, but none for Singapore, China, Kuwait, or the UAE.