Veeam extends channel proposition with Kasten

Veeam has been getting its channel up to speed on Kubernetes as it looks to get partners involved with the fruits of its acquisition of Kasten.

The vendor picked up Kasten, which provides data backup, disaster recovery and mobility for Kubernetes, last October and has been ramping up its education efforts around the technology.

Alex Walsh, manager of channels and alliances UK&I at Veeam, said the firm had seen increasing demand from partners for more educational support, with the summer months seeing a surge in the use of online tools.

“We made efforts to offer a revamped version earlier in the year and we’ve had that period over the summer when people are focused on education,” he said. “We’ve received some really strong, positive feedback on that, so that’s been great for us to be able to help those partners to enable themselves.

“An area of focus for me certainly has been around the customer piece and educating the partners around the Kubernetes space. It’s obviously been a new space to enter with Kasten and we are in the process of really educating those partners that already do work in that container space and enabling them on the added value of working with Veeam and Kasten together.”

Conversations with partners on the subject had picked up in the last few months as many started to look at growth opportunities, said Walsh.

“A lot of our top partners have been contacting us about expanding into campaigns with alliances that we wouldn’t have historically worked with,” he added. “So it’s really a new route to market, not just for Veeam but also for the partners, which has been good.”

Walsh said more customers were looking at containers and there was a chance for the channel to have an input into that developing strategy.

“With the rise of requirements around containerisation and with more businesses looking at that as part of their future strategy, it’s going to be of interest,” he said.

Kasten has added more depth to Veeam’s portfolio and enabled its existing resellers to offer an extended solution and go back to their customer base with a fresh proposition. It has also made the firm attractive to some fresh partners.

“We’re definitely having conversations with new partners,” said Walsh. “It’s a very different space. Whereas historically we would have dealt with a lot of partners that specialise in backup and recovery, we’re now speaking to DevOps partners, which we haven’t historically done.

“It’s definitely a new route to market for Veeam with Kasten and it strengthens the overall proposition around what we can do around modern data protection.”

Walsh added his voice to those across the channel that have been describing a return to more robust trading conditions as the pandemic eases.

“We’ve definitely seen an increase in the number of partners that we’re transacting with on a quarterly basis, year over year, so that’s a really healthy sign and it’s getting us back to sort of pre-pandemic levels of transactions with our partners, which is great to see,” he said.