Veeam has bolstered its North American ProPartner program with new training, marketing and financial perks. The enhancements surface amid intensifying competition across the cloud backup, disaster recovery and data protection markets.
Veeam pointed to these partner program enhancements, among others:
- Veeam IQ: Formally called Veeam University, this is a partner-facing training platform. It features a new Learning Management System (LMS) for partner education.
- Marketing Investments: This includes a new Marketing Concierge service – a dedicated marketing consultant group available to collaborate with partners to build multi-touch campaigns that focus on digital marketing tactics.
- Accelerated Growth Rebates for Gold and Platinum Partners: Partners that overachieve on a quarterly or annual basis may receive additional accelerators and back-end rebates.
- New Partner Perks and Incentives: This program recognizes partners for completing particular tasks, such as co-selling with an alliance, taking a certification, completing a POC, or running a competitive campaign.
In a prepared statement, James Mundle, VP of worldwide channels at Veeam, said:
“Together with our partners, Veeam has experienced unprecedented growth since inception. As the adoption of cloud-based business models continues to grow, and programs become more complex, the constant is that we always keep the customer experience across all segments as our top priority, delivering the best products, solutions, and services in a way they can consume them better and more efficiently than any other technology company.”
Veeam: Funding, Growth, Competition
The partner program enhancements arrive one month after private equity firm Insight Venture Partners and other investors pumped $500 million into Veeam.
No doubt, Veeam has been in growth mode. The privately held company generates about $1 billion in annual sales, and has more than 325,000 customers worldwide. The company's overall business model is channel-centric, with a heavy dependence on cloud services providers (CSPs) and MSPs, along with strategic alliances (Cisco, HP Enterprise, others) up in the enterprise.
Still, competition is intensifying in the data protection market. Well-funded names like Cohesity, Druva, and Rubrik are grabbing market share in cloud-centric data protection and storage markets. And Datto has momentum with MSPs in the SMB sector. Plus, private equity firms are seeking BDR companies to bolt onto their MSP-centric software platforms.
MSPs and SMB Data Protection
Competition is particularly fierce in the SMB data protection market. In addition to Datto, rivals like Axcient, StorageCraft and the Barracuda MSP business have a critical mass of partners.
Entrenched companies also are making talent and technology investments. Most notably, Commvault announced a new CEO yesterday after a 10-month search for a new leader.
Amid all those competitive moves, anecdotal evidence says Veeam is still growing. The big question is whether the company can maintain its growth rates -- while incentivizing partners along the way.
It's a safe bet Veeam will share more partner program milestones during the company's VeeamOn 2019 conference in May.
