The new functionality will also let service providers provide their customers with cloud-based disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) through the new Veeam Cloud Connect Replication for Service Providers offering.
Doug Hazelman, Veeam’s VP of Product Strategy
Veeam Software has announced another new capability that will be part of the Veeam Availability Suite v9 when it becomes generally available later this year. Veeam Cloud Connect will be extended to include advanced image-based VM replication capabilities. As a result, this will let service providers provide their customers with cloud-based disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) through a new Veeam Cloud Connect Replication for Service Providers offering, which is a separately licensed product.
“This is one component of v9, which is the second feature announcement for v9 we have announced, and we will have more announcements in the summer and fall,” said Doug Hazelman, Veeam’s VP of Product Strategy. Late last month, Veeam announced that v9 will integrate with EMC VNX and VNXe hybrid storage arrays.
The cloud replication is a followup to the ability introduced with Cloud Connect in v8 to let the customer backup on-prem and copy to the cloud.
“What was nice about this for the service provider and any VAR who wanted to do it was that it required minimal setup, other than having some compute and storage,” Hazelman said. “It was very easy for them to set up.”
Hazelman said that while some service providers had wanted replication out of the gate, for Veeam it was more an issue of following their philosophy of innovate and iterate.
“We knew we wanted to get backup out there immediately, and make sure it worked well, so by the time we delivered replication in v9 it would have been tweaked and solid,” he said. “Replication had been asked for but some service providers were already able to provide it with v8. It just meant more work on their side.”
The addition now of that replication capacity, as well as its availability in a DRaaS offering, will make service providers’ lives easier, and improve their margins.
“We think this will really appeal to regional managed service providers and regional cloud providers who are already offering DRaaS already, because it will be easy to get up and running,” Hazelman said. “It will also appeal to those who want DRaaS but who can’t afford to stand up a site.”
Hazelman also indicated partners have several ways to make money off the cloud replication capability.
“They will have better margins in disaster recovery than if they just have backup and archiving,” he said. “Previously, we didn’t have multitenancy and now with v9 we have full multitenant support. Previously we also required the use of a VPN requirement, which is now gone. So this will save on hardware and other requirements.”
Hazelman also indicated partners can expect to realize licensing savings as well.
“Our goal here is to acquire share, and to do that, we have to offer licensing at a price that MSPs will consider competitive,” he said. He pointed out that firm details are not yet available, however, because while the general contours are known, final pricing and licensing costs have yet to be determined.
A free trial of Veeam Cloud Connect for Service Providers is available to members of the Veeam Cloud Provider (VCP) program.
“The VCP program’s year-over-year growth is over 100 per cent,” Hazelman said. “Having this rental or subscription model pricing gives us another revenue stream, and we want that diversification.”
Veeam Cloud Connect with replication, a feature of the new Veeam Availability Suite v9, will become generally available in the second half of 2015.
