Data resilience leader Veeam’s increasing focus on security is driving solid growth and creating new opportunities for a fast-growing partner network across Africa.
This is according to Lisa Strydom, Senior Manager: Channel & Alliances – Africa at Veeam, who says Veeam’s channel and alliance model enables local partners to not only implement Veeam’s solutions, but also optimise them for long-term data resilience and business continuity across Africa.
Investment in growth
Strydom says it’s an exciting time for Veeam and its partners across Africa. “We had a 19.6% year-on-year growth for the Africa region last year, and now have more than 250 active partners in 27 African countries. What differentiates us is that there's constant investment into our technology. Veeam is listening to what the customers' needs are in the market, and is innovating and making acquisitions that strengthen our portfolio to address these needs.”
Compelling security competencies
She says Veeam’s growing security portfolio is particularly compelling for customers and partners.
“We can now assist with forensic audits once any customer has been hit by a ransomware attack, help them remediate and build plans for them to get back up and running after they've been hit.”
“Our partner landscape has changed over the past few years as we moved from focusing on only the data centre space. We've grown our alliance portfolio significantly, and started acquiring a whole new type of partner, including organisations that are very strong in the hyperscaler landscape focusing on SaaS offerings, specialist partners focusing on Kubernetes environments, and many new security partners who see the importance of helping their customers' data be as secure as possible.
“We also have a very strong Veeam Cloud Service Provider programme, which supports customers looking to keep their data local and adhere to data sovereignty laws. At Veeam, we always talk about that 3, 2, 1, 1, 0 rule: three copies of your data, two different types of media, one offsite copy, one offline air-gapped or immutable copy and zero errors after backup recoverability verification. For customers implementing that rule, leveraging a local cloud service provider partner is going to be key for that strategy,” Strydom says.
She highlights the shared responsibility model for organisations using hyperscaler cloud services: “The hyperscaler terms and conditions state that the service provider will assure the uptime of the data centre, but customers must ensure their data is protected,” she says.
“Our Veeam Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) partners give customers the ability to have more copies of data off-site, and VCSP partners will manage it for them and ensure that they're adhering to all the necessary security standards. VCSP partners also offer solutions as a service, so they can offer backup as a service or disaster recovery as a service, to name a few. This takes the pain away from customers, and customers don't need to invest in additional skills and certifications, as well as not having to invest in capex costs of data centre facilities for their DR planning. Our value-added resellers and Veeam Cloud Service Provider partners also have the ability to offer customers an all-in-one solution with our SaaS offerings. Veeam Data Cloud for M365 and Azure workloads offers customers peace of mind with an all-inclusive offering to eliminate bill shock to address true data resilience for their infrastructures. A new addition to our VDC offering is storage as a service, with our Veeam Data Cloud Vault offering expanding our portfolio in the SaaS business."
Partner and channel opportunities
Strydom explains that Veeam has a three-tier channel model for resellers. "That is our traditional value-added reseller model. We have now extended that to the SaaS offerings with our new Veeam Data Cloud offering and we allow our resellers to sell traditional on-premises solutions, as well as our cloud solutions. Outside of our flagship products with Veeam Data Platform, Veeam Data Cloud is our largest growth opportunity. It offers shorter sales cycles because it's an all-in-one solution, and customers don’t need to worry about additional storage costs, egress costs or bill shock at the end of every month.” Outside of the go to markets already mentioned, Veeam also extends offerings through many alliance programmes and marketplaces with the hyperscalers.
With 12 major releases set to take place this year, Veeam is continually bringing more to market, creating growth opportunities for partners to upsell and cross-sell into their existing customer base as well as obtain net new logos, she says: “We will see our SaaS and our AI initiatives expanding during 2025 and beyond.”
Enabling partners and building competencies
Veeam is committed to helping resellers and partners build competencies and has invested in skills development and support structures, Strydom says.
“As we branch out beyond backup and recovery, we've expanded our curriculum to focus on competencies where partners can specialise. Partners and customers have access to two training providers in the region who offer the technical, instructor-led training. The focus with the VMCE training is installation, configuration and management of end-user environments. With the VMCA instructor-led training, they focus on the design aspect with Veeam.
“A great differentiator for us is the vast amount of hands-on labs that partners have access to for learning purposes, where technical teams learn to deep dive into a specific area that they may need to familiarise themselves with,” Strydom says.
Prospective partners are invited to register on the Veeam site https://propartner.veeam.com.
Strydom says: “Our teams or selected distributors will reach out to potential partners and take them through an onboarding programme. We also work with them on a strategy best suited for their business and customers, and have an extensive set of tools to support them in growing their business with Veeam’s support.”
Download a free guide to building a cyber resilient data recovery strategy here.
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