Veeam and NetApp have concluded an agreement in which, for the first time, NetApp will add Veeam Availability Solutions to their price list. Veeam can now be purchased by NetApp partners as part of a single purchase order.

Both companies see the deal as materially addressing their Total Addressable Market. NetApp sees it opening up business for them in the midmarket and SMB spaces, while Veeam views it as strengthening them in the enterprise.

“NetApp’s relationships with customer enterprise accounts are often years in the making,” said Rob Emsley, Director of Alliance Marketing at Veeam. “Our relationship with these accounts, on the other hand, is small to non-existent. This gives us a seat at the table, and lets us get access to enterprise customers.”

“Veeam is very successful in the commercial segment,” said Jeff McCullough, NetApp’s VP of Channel Sales for the Americas. “Our strength is in the enterprise, but many of our partners sell into the commercial sector. This agreement makes it easier for us to participate in a business that partners are already putting together, selling Veeam to NetApp customers. Being able to sell Veeam and NetApp in a single order makes it easier for our partners to sell Veeam.”

The agreement both deepens Veeam’s relationship with NetApp, and highlights the increased importance Veeam is attaching to vendor alliances.

“NetApp has been a solid partner of ours for about three years,” Emsley said. “We started integrating it with Version 8 of our product because to provide better data protection, you need to better integrate to take advantage of snapshotting. Snapshotting has been a cornerstone of ONTAP. So we have had this technical integration, and to sell, we would meet in the channel.”

This is Veeam’s first resale agreement with NetApp, but it is their third in the last twelve months, following earlier ones with HPE, and then Cisco.

“This ‘win-win’ agreement is consistent with our other alliance partnerships where we have moved to a resell model,” Emsley said. “We have 49,000 partners worldwide and NetApp has 4,000. A lot of their partners are also our partners. We won’t stop providing availablility to SMB and commercial customers, but we would love to satisfy the needs of the largest enterprises. 75 per cent of the Fortune 500 has bought us at one time or another, but we need to expand our footprint there. We need to move beyond departmental deployments.”

“Alliances are going to be playing a more strategic role in Veeam’s growth,” said Carey Stanton,  VP of Global Business & Corporate Development at Veeam.  “This kind of agreement doesn’t cannibalize anything. We will still complement our existing core partner base. But it does allow NetApp to control the sales cycle for these enterprise sales.”

“Our partner channel is near and dear to our heart,” Emsley said. “We will make sure there is parity no matter how the product is delivered and we will work out the mechanics of selling through.”

Stanton also indicated that the deal has some additional technology components as well.

“Their product development team has been working with ours to integrate into our API,” he said.