VeeamON 2019: The 5 Biggest Statements From Ratmir Timashev

While data protection and management software company Veeam has been on a tear, co-founder Ratmir Timashev says the company is continuing to evolve--and is fully embracing where the market is going next.

In 2019, that means hybrid cloud, Timashev said during the company's VeeamON conference in Miami on Tuesday.

[Related: Veeam’s Ratmir Timashev On Public Cloud Backlash, Office 365 Growth And ‘Aggressive’ Acquisition Strategy]

While announcing that Veeam has passed $1 billion in bookings over the past 12 months, Timashev, who is also the company's executive vice president of sales and marketing, said Veeam is now entering "Act 2," which is all about protecting and managing data in hybrid cloud environments.

"The opportunities are tremendous for Veeam and for our partners," Timashev told more than 2,000 attendees at VeeamON. "This is the next stage of our evolution."

What follows are Timashev's five biggest statements at VeeamON 2019.

Growth

"I'm very happy to announce that as of May 15, Veeam achieved a major milestone. We have become a $1 billion company. [We have joined] a very elite group of companies. There are only 34 companies in the world [that are] pure software companies whose revenues are more than $1 billion. It's a great achievement …

In 2013, we said that within five years we would [reach] $1 billion. I'm very excited. We have grown fast--exponential growth, profitable growth. And with the journey we've also added many, many new customers. We achieved another milestone--350,000 customers, with approximately 4,000 net new customers every month. Approximately 50,000 [were added] last year."

Hybrid Cloud

"What is Act 2? Act 2 is all about hybrid cloud. The opportunities are tremendous for Veeam and for our partners. This is the next stage of our evolution. When I speak to our customers, about how we can help them to modernize their data management with backup infrastructure, the conversation always shifts to how Veeam can help [them] move to hybrid cloud--how Veeam can help [them] to leverage public cloud's elasticity and scalability to accelerate their business. This conversation always moves to a hybrid cloud conversation.

According to our survey of our customers, 73 percent have a hybrid cloud strategy. Less than 10 percent are planning to stay 100-percent on-prem. And less than 15 percent are planning to completely move to public cloud. The majority, 73 percent, are building hybrid cloud infrastructure. The market is tremendous for us and for our partners."

Cloud Data Management

"Our vision [is] to be the most trusted provider of backup solutions that deliver cloud data management … What's made Veeam successful, when we talk to our customers, they say three things: simple, reliable and flexible. Of course, powerful features, scalability, great support, [a] great ecosystem are also reasons. But the top three are simplicity, reliability and flexibility--that's what's made us successful. And I promise you, we will stay with this for Act 2.

Veeam is extremely well-positioned to dominate in Act 2, because we've moved beyond just being the No. 1 for VMware. Now our platform is a comprehensive platform that offers backup solutions for all workloads--all the workloads that exist in the modern data center, in the hybrid cloud--virtual, physical, SaaS, cloud."

Nutanix Partnership

"Two weeks ago, Nutanix and Veeam announced a new solution called Nutanix Mine with Veeam. It's a very exciting new product that will be coming later this year. Two innovators in their respective industries--Veeam in data management and Nutanix in cloud management of hyperconverged--join our R&D resources to build this joint solution.

The goal for that solution is very simple--to bring customer experience to the next level, to provide an absolutely seamless, out-of-the-box customer experience. Easy to deploy, easy to configure, easy to manage, from a single interface. It's two companies with a single solution. And it all can be available with one SKU from our joint channel partners."

Microsoft Azure, AWS Consumption

"I'm excited about our partnership with Microsoft. Veeam's ability to now tier data to Azure Blob was a game changer. In the last four or five months, since we released our [Availability Suite 9.5] Update 4 in January of this year, our consumption of Azure as well as AWS from our customers has skyrocketed. Because it's so easy now, from the simple interface, when you are scheduling your backup jobs and data protection jobs to also tier the data into the object storage. It's an awesome capability."