Object First, which makes a backup storage appliance purpose-built for Veeam users, has made multiple announcements that should have broad appeal to Veeam customers and to the channel. First, they have announced Ootbi Mini, a new compact immutable storage appliance designed for remote and branch offices (ROBOs), other types of edge environments, and smaller businesses compared to the company’s existing customer base. They also added a new Ootbi Honeypot feature with their version 1.7 release, which is a free update, and which Object First says will be free forever, Finally, Object First has announced a beta program for Ootbi Fleet Manager, a cloud-based application that allows customers to monitor their whole Ootbi fleet from a single dashboard.
“The Ootbi Minis [Ootbi being an acronym for Out of the Box Immutability] are meant for ROBOs and small businesses with no data centres,” said Anthony Cusimano, Solutions Director at Object First, who leads a team that does Object First’s product marketing and technical marketing. The Ootbi Mini comes in 8, 16, and 24 TB capacities and is housed in a desktop tower that does not require a traditional data centre. “If you have a data centre, if you have 20 TB and a rack mount server, you are not looking at a Mini. The Mini really is built for a new use case. Our existing fleet, from the 20 TBs all the way up to the 432, that’s your enterprise data centre, immutable data storage repository, rack and stack setups. Now you don’t sacrifice anything on the security side with the Mini. You’re just giving up that extra disk space and the 2U form factor. From a performance perspective, an operational perspective, the user experience, it’s all the same. Now, I will say, because of the disk types we’re using, the performance has dwindled a little bit. It’s about 30% less performance than our traditional fleet.”
Cusimano indicated that the principal concern is the actual physical security of the appliance.
“The one thing that we are encouraging people that is fundamentally different is to consider physical security,” he said. “Unlike a 2U, which is in a rack and is screwed in, and it’s usually very hard to get into one of those data centres unless there is bad security, or some kind of physical security issue, if the Mini is sitting on a desk that’s just in your back closet, plugged into your laptop or your computer, it can be stolen. So there is a Kensington lock on the back of it. We absolutely tell everyone to rope that cable through something foundational and sturdy, so someone can’t just go carry the box away and get access to your backup data. Worst case scenario, if they do do that, even though there’s no way that they can do anything with the data, because it is immutable. They can’t delete it. The only thing they can do is physically destroy it with a hammer or something along those lines. So from a customer experience perspective, the biggest change is the actual physical setup of the box, because, you’re not doing a rack and stack.”
The Ootbi Mini, because it is built on Zero Trust principles, delivers Absolute Immutability, which means no one, not even an admin, can alter the firmware, operating system, storage layer, or backup data. Most customers like this, although some do need convincing,
“We were at our first VeeamON [he was with CEO David Bennett] and we were showing off the beta of the product,” Cusimano stated. “We didn’t have a name for it then. We weren’t even calling it absolute immutability at the time. We were just saying we don’t give access to you to go and delete data for whatever the window is that’s set for immutability. And there was a visceral reaction from some people on that which has not changed. Since then, we’ve quantified this as absolute immutability, which includes zero access for Destructive action, zero time delay on writing immutable data, but we see this is something that is an absolute must. It’s not just for compliance and regulations. It’s a must because ransomware is just more invasive than it has ever been before, especially now, with AI being used as sort of an uplifter for the efficacy of ransomware. You cannot trust even your most trusted admin. That’s zero trust as a principle. We leverage zero trust principles and we push it out as absolute immutability, because we want people to realize your visceral reaction to us taking away your privilege. That’s not us saying we don’t trust you. We just don’t trust the people that can easily hack you and pretend to be you or become you in any of the vectors that go about doing so. And usually when I have those conversations with people, it always starts out defensive, but it ends with like, ‘I see I get it. I understand it’. And you know, the other thing I like to point out is we are not your destination storage for all use cases. It’s for backup. How often have you actually needed to go and delete backup data for any reason? And once you start having that conversation, they really start to get it. It is an immutable data vault that shouldn’t change. It should be able to preserve that data, because it is backup data. We’re just we’re having to reteach people, because it looks like classic storage, but what it is, is absolutely immutable backup storage.”
Cusimano provided more detail on who will be buying these out of the gate, bearing in mind that the enterprise ROBO markets and smaller businesses are different in many ways notwithstanding their size.
“David Bennett’s answer is that the Ootbi Mini is designed to really be an entry way into the Object First environment,” he said. “If you were skeptical about our company, and you were thinking you don’t know if you are ready to commit to an appliance, the Mini is a very cost effective way to try it at a ROBO. They say ‘ hey, I’ve got Veeam configured across all of my locations. Let’s try it out with a Mini and see where that gets us.’ It’s a doorway for us to get into those prospects that might be a little bit more cautious about going with a startup solution over something that’s a little bit more known.”
Cusimano’s view on the issue is different.
“I think this is a great opportunity for us to expand more into businesses that have lots of remote and edge locations,” he said. “I’m thinking cruise lines. If you’re selling into an environment that has boats or any kind of potential offsite, off WiFi, off a network office that maybe only connects once in a blue moon, or we need some kind of offsite backup at every location where we’re doing laptop type work, the Object First Mini is a great expansion play into those environments. It really does open a lot of doors for us, and this has actually been something that we’ve been getting asked for for over two years. Folks have really wanted us to get outside of the 2U form factor and do something small. So I’m really excited to see what our customers actually think about it when they get their hands on it, and I’m very curious to see how it how it takes off in the next quarter or so, from a sales perspective.”
The Ootbi Mini has the same ransomware-proof data protection, intuitive user interface and simple Veeam integration as the existing Ootbi fleet. Ootbi Mini is available as either a CapEx purchase or a consumption-based subscription. It can be ordered now, with deliveries beginning in January 2026.
Object First also announced Honeypot, which is for early detection of cyberthreats targeting Veeam Backup and Replication. It is being introduced in Version 1.7 of Ootbi. With just two clicks, Honeypot deploys a decoy VBR environment on a securely segmented part of Ootbi, acting as a tripwire. If any suspicious activity is detected, Honeypot immediately sends alerts through the customer’s preferred channel.
“This is a complete net new and it was actually inspired in part by the Veeam community,” Cusimano said. “The Veeam community put out their own honeypot technology and if you go on the forums, you can find it. I don’t remember who made it, but they basically created their own little honeypot you could deploy that’s looks like a VBR and acts like a VBR. But it was too complicated. It requires a lot of effort, a lot of attention, a lot of babysitting. We saw that effort from the community, and we have a box that is secure to the nines. It would not be difficult for us to essentially segment a portion of our array and run a simulated VBR server that essentially acts as a a trap or trip wire for for bad actors, without doing any sort of sacrifice to the rest of the box. So that’s exactly what we did. We we basically were inspired by the VM community, but said, we’re going to do our own and we’re going to make it really easy. It is two clicks to set it up. It shows up on the network, just like a real VBR does. And then the neat thing about it is it’s instantaneous.”
Honeypot is available at no cost to current Ootbi customers using 1.7.
“This will be forever free,” Cusimano noted. “All our boxes in the future will ship with Honeypot included. It is simply just an additional feature of Ootbi now. It works on our 2U boxes too. It was just part of the 1.7 firmware update. We will never charge for updates as long as our customers are in in in their support contract, or within their support contract, they’ll be able to get access to this. We’re doing a slow rollout of it, so you don’t have those kind of CrowdStrike problems where everyone is down. But in the next month, everyone will have access to it as we roll it out to all of our audience, and it will forever be free and included with our products, so long as you’re within the support agreement today.”
The other major piece of news is that Object First announced a beta program for Ootbi Fleet Manager, a cloud-based application that allows customers to monitor their entire Ootbi fleet from a single dashboard. Users can view a complete breakdown of their footprint, including hardware health and utilization.
“We have already been in beta with a couple of our partners so far, and we have actually opened up that partner beta further,” Cusimano stated. “We want to get quite a few people in here and really kicking the tires of Fleet Manager before we get to our 1.0 release in Q1 of 2026. The kind of folks that are signing up are a broad spectrum. We expect fleet manager to play very well with licensed resellers, service providers –folks that are doing managed service providing for clients. You get a single view of all of those Object First OOTBI clusters and a single sign on login location that’s hosted in the cloud that you don’t have to manage yourself. Fleet Manager is for them too. And then there’s the mid-enterprise type customer. They aren’t looking at the cluster view, but at their business view. It gives you consumption information and how much data you’re using, If you’re on a subscription model, you’re getting an idea of how much you’re using month over month. It’s really meant to be that single pane of glass, and it is really meant for every Object First customer to use to give them a better understanding of their holistic object first deployments, not just that single slice cluster view that they get today.”
Cusimano said this is all great news for their channel.
“We’re aiming to get partnerships with every licensed Veeam reseller,” he indicated. “We have channel reps and channel SEs, and their whole end goal is to onboard as many of these partners as they can, either business or technical. It’s a never ending journey of expansion there. These folks are hungry. They are all of the major both Veeam events, but we also sponsor RSA. We’re at all of the major sort of user group events, and are constantly meeting with channel partners. We’re part of the hands-on lab program that’s run through licensed Veeam resellers, and we’re even starting our own hands-on lab program where we onboard channel partners, 10 to 11 of them each, each lab. And we do multiples of these a month. So it is an exponential growth that we’re aiming to do.
“Literally everything we announced helps the partner,” Cusimano concluded. “Now our partners and resellers have a whole new capacity and a whole new form factor that their customers have probably been asking them for, that they can now sell. So the Mini is great for an expansion play. Honeypot, again, because it’s free, is a value add that they can have a conversation with all of their their clients and customers with. Then Fleet Manager is truly on the partner side. I think the most value in that is if they are a managed reseller, if they are managing these environments, they’re managing the Veeam side, now they are going to have a portal that they can use to create a holistic view of their clients and customers and really hone in on the details. There’s no reason why Object First can’t be part of that conversation.”