The SwiftStack integration, their first ever with Veeam, lets local data on Veeam servers be automatically moved between performance and capacity tiers created in SwiftStack, defined by an organization’s management and retention policies.
The Veeam-SwiftStack integration
Today, multi-cloud data management vendor SwiftStack announced full Day One support for Veeam’s new Cloud Tier, which Veeam formally unveiled itself earlier today at their Velocity 2019 annual sales kickoff event. SwiftStack sees significant opportunity in the new relationship, on several levels.
Veeam Cloud Tier is the most high-profile feature in the newly-announced Veeam Availability Suite 9.5, Update 4. It adds the capability of native object storage integration to its backup repository. The SwiftStack integration lets local data on Veeam servers be automatically moved between performance and capacity tiers created in SwiftStack, defined by an organization’s management and retention policies.
“What’s really significant about this for us, and our customers, is that Veeam is now another leading IT platform that supports a modern cloud architecture,” said Erik Pounds, SwiftStack’s VP of marketing. “When customers move to cloud architectures, it’s often behind cloud storage, and once they see this type of product, they quickly learn the value of cloud storage. A great way to get going for many customers on cloud storage will be with a well- known application like Veeam. Using SwiftStack behind Veeam is a great way for them to fully leverage cloud storage.”
This is the first time the two companies have come together in this way.
“This is our first partnership with Veeam,” Pounds said. “We have been working together for the last couple of years on ways this functionality could exist, however. The result is that our team knows Veeam really well, and should be able to hit the ground running. It also helps a great deal that we both have Cisco as an important co-platform partner.”
Pounds said that the simplicity that had traditionally been a focus at SMB-focused vendors had not been a priority in the enterprise, but that something like Veeam Cloud Tier can change that.
“Veeam Cloud Tier both automates the system and makes it much more efficient, while keeping it all really clean,” he stated. “Before, with Veeam, you had .VBK files that you had to copy all over. Now, in a single repository, it moves all the files off to the cloud while keeping the metadata close to Veeam. That’s a big factor in cutting storage costs. You also don’t have to track if data is on-prem or on the cloud.”
“What’s also exciting for us is the ability of the partnership with Veeam to broaden the market that we address,” Pounds indicated. “A lot of SwiftStack’s success has been in very large deployments at multi -PB scale. We have done these deals either through very large partners, or do them direct and use partners to fulfill. With Veeam, this will enable end-to-end fully cloud-native solutions, which we can drive broadly through strategic partners in channel. In particular, we expect to leverage Cisco partners, since Cisco is also a big Veeam strategic partner.”
Some of SwiftStack’s customers were not large when they began with them, but the company was able to land and expand, and thinks the Veeam partnership will facilitate more business like this.
“Some of our large customers started smaller, with some starting at under 200 TB,” Pounds said. “They initially used us for one project, to solve one problem, and then expanded us when they thought of other solutions for object storage. The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre deployed us first as a small-scale archive for Commvault, and now use us in a cluster that is over 3 PB in size for all their scientific research. While Veeam is seeing demand further up in the enterprise, we think that this partnership will give us more traction in the midmarket commercial space.”
That being said, Pounds said the Veeam partnership should also help SwiftStack in the enterprise as well.
“Veeam is also seeing demand further up in the enterprise,” he said. “I think Veeam is well positioned to compete against companies like Rubrik and Cohesity there because they are software only. There isn’t any more hardware that you have to buy. I think they will be successful going upmarket.”
Look for more important strategic partnerships from SwiftStack. Last fall, SwiftStack entered a new partnership with Splunk around the new SmartStore feature within the Splunk Enterprise platform, and it has met their expectations.
“With Splunk, we have been running an initiative in the federal space with Carahsoft that has produced awesome results,” Pounds said. “You will see more SwiftStack initiatives like this with strategic partners.”
