5 Things Solution Providers Need To Know About Nutanix's 'Premier' Partnership With Veeam

Feet On The Accelerator

In a move to simplify sales for solution providers and offer an integrated data recovery and backup solution as part of its in-house hypervisor, Nutanix has expanded its relationship with Veeam. The agreement makes Veeam the "Premier Availability" solution for Nutanix. Also, Veeam will add support for Nutanix's AHV hypervisor as part of its Veeam Availability Suite.

Baar, Switzerland-based Veeam and Nutanix, San Jose, Calif., do the vast majority of their business through the channel, and the agreement means solution providers can offer a comprehensive enterprise cloud solution in a single sale, the companies said. Veeam will begin support for Nutanix AHV before the end of the year, the company said.

Nutanix is a darling of the red-hot market for hyper-converged infrastructure, and Veeam, until this year a midmarket-focused firm, is moving aggressively into the cloud and the enterprise and issued a warning to partners earlier this year that those that don't begin moving toward the cloud risk being left behind.

The expanding Nutanix-Veeam relationship means customers can "dramatically accelerate" their journey to the cloud, boosting channel partners' sales opportunities in the multi-cloud world.

Here are five things solution providers should know about the partnership.

'Premier Availability'

The agreement makes Veeam the "Premier Availability" provider for Nutanix virtualized environments, and it's the second major hyper-converged infrastructure move Veeam has made in the past three months. In March, the company said it would provide native snapshot capabilities for Cisco's HyperFlex HCI solution. That solution was developed in conjunction with Cisco engineers.

Supporting Nutanix's Enterprise Hypervisor

As part of the Nutanix partnership, Veeam will support the Nutanix AHV hypervisor in the Veeam Availability Suite backup, recovey, replication, monitoring and reporting software. The pairing is aimed squarely at enterprise and hybrid cloud customers that require both on-premise and off-premise cloud environments and constant availability. Nutanix's open-source KVM AHV comes free with its Acropolis turnkey hyper-convergence platform. The platform also supports VMware vShpere and Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisors.

Relationship Status: Available

Until now, Veeam has focused primarily on the midmarket. A link with Nutanix and support for its AHV hypervisor puts out a clear signal to the market that Veeam is ready to do business in the enterprise, as well. Veeam kicked off an aggressive push into the cloud early this year, and committed $200 million to helping partners work with cloud providers to offer customers cash incentives to adopt a cloud strategy.

Simplified For The Channel

The partnership between Veeam and Nutanix isn't necessarily surprising. Both companies rely on the channel for nearly all of their revenue. Under the new agreement, Veeam becomes a featured app in the new Nutanix Marketplace, and the companies are pinning their hopes for growth on partners that build their business on selling complete solutions. With Veeam on board, Nutanix partners can now offer an entire enterprise data center solution in a single sale.

Get Moving

Veeam this year has made a concerted effort to get partners moving toward the cloud, starting with offering its disaster recovery and backup software as a service. Veeam President and COO Peter McKay (pictured) told CRN earlier this year that some partners are moving quickly toward the cloud, but many are not -- and they risk being left behind. Veeam changed its sales model earlier this year, and now Veeam salespeople are compensated identically whether a partner is completing a cloud deal with a service provider or a traditional perpetual license deal.