 Veeam is one of the more interesting stories we've covered in the past decade. Born in 2006 with a simple premise to make backing up virtualized systems easy, fast, consistent, and cost effective, the company's timing was perfect as it rode the coattails of the virtualization trend with a laser focus on developing great products that just worked, that's the tagline. Fast forward to 2021 and Veeam has surpassed the billion dollar mark in revenues and has transformed into a leading, the leading, the number one independent pure play company for backup and data protection software. Company's expanding its time, extending from its on-prem roots into cloud, the cloud data backup, containers, and SAS data protection. And with me to talk about its progress and how it thinks about the future of Bill Largent, the CEO and chairman of Veeam and Jim Kruger, the CMO at the company. Gentlemen, welcome, great to see you again. Hey, great to see you again, Dave. Thank you, Dave. Great to be here. Great introduction, by the way, I appreciate that set up. I've been following you guys for a long time, but you know, you don't sit still. So give us the business update. I mean, you guys are cranking, you just put out a press release on your progress. You're pretty transparent for a private company. We love that, but give us the update, Bill. Yeah, thanks very much. I'll do that. Really, we're pretty excited about the press release. We said Q1, how we're 25% up, air our growth. We've made a great transition with our team. Super strong on our performance, our economic performance. We like being transparent. We're transparent with clearly our owners. Now Insight Venture Partners, and that's been a big transaction that occurred in the last 15, 14 months. And we're transparent with our customers, our partners, our distributors, and our vendors. So we're just that way. We like to make sure we're good partners with all of those along the line, and we care quite a bit about them. So I think that transparency helps us with our customer base and where we're going with our product and what we've had to offer. We're now over 4,500 employees strong around the globe. 40 plus countries operating well on all those jurisdictions with the COVID. Coming out of, I would say, coming out of, hopefully coming out of a rough time period from the geographical, geopolitical COVID issues. So we believe we've done extremely well through then. Businesses continue to grow for us. So we're really excited about where things are. Insight has done a great job in helping us advance our business and thinking about looking at new TAMs to go after. And we're pretty excited about it. So. Well, I had 13 consecutive quarters of double digit growth for a company of your age and size is very impressive. You don't see that often. Yeah, we've worked pretty hard at that. It's, I'd say we really focus on that year to year, even though our quarters just keep popping along very nicely for us, you know, starting back in 06 having been around since then, we did start at absolute zero. We didn't have a, didn't have a bit in the bank at that time. Now it's a whole different story with our second year over a billion dollars in our, when you look at a TCV kind of calculation and us transforming into an ARR, a heavy perpetual base. So we've transitioned with new product offering being all subscription based. So that's making us making us even more competitive than we've had been past. Well, I like how you couch that because you don't want to be trapped into that, you know, the cordially shock lock, but still it's quite impressive performance. And with the ARR, that's how it smooths things out. Jim, I want to ask you about the Veeamon. It's again, virtual this year, second year in a row. You know, it's been, been frustrating because we can't be face-to-face, but what have you learned about the, the sort of virtual events? How has it performed for you? Do you see that continuing in some way shape or form when you get back to physical? How are you thinking about that? Yeah, we had, we had two major virtual events last year. And so to your point, we, we did learn a lot in terms of what works, what doesn't work. And we've continued to refine, refine, refine the plans. One thing that it does is it just really opens the doors for a much broader audience. Typically we get about 2,000-ish people that attend in person for Veeamon. And last year we had actually about 28,000 people representing 150 countries that registered for the event. And we had over 11,000 that actually attended. And the engagement was really good. And we were, our scores in terms of satisfaction were, you know, four plus out of five. And so I think we did a pretty good job, but we continued to learn. One of the things that you need to do is you need to sort of shorten the agenda because the attention span is not, not very long. So all of our sessions are 30 minutes or less. And we've actually put it over two days where it's about three and a half hours each day. So we try to keep it a little bit lighter. We still have 30 different breakout sessions. We have keynotes, some great speakers that are coming, some great customers that are coming. But you have to integrate some fun, some incentives, things of that sort. So we've been creating a lot of buzz leading up to Veeamon with a lot of social activity. We have some new Veeam Nike kicks that people can win, which has generated a lot of excitement. And we'll be doing a lot of incentives and prizes and things as a part of the event. So that's a key learning that we know that people love and just creates a lot of buzz, in addition to, of course, the great content. Veeamon has good swag, too, as an analyst. I always appreciate that. Veeamon and Pure Storage, you guys are like at the top of the list. We take care of you, Dave, for sure. That's pretty big, thanks for that. But I got to ask you, so one of the hard parts is, because you guys are all-channel, 100% channel have been from day zero. That's got to be tough, because we've been in this business a long time doing hybrid for a long time. And the sellers love to be belly to belly. They never wanted sort of hybrid. So it's got to be tougher for the partners as well, who are big channels. So how do you integrate the partners? What can we expect in these types of things going forward? Yeah, so I can start just with Veeamon though, and then we can talk a little bit more. But for Veeamon, we actually have a really strong partner registration. So partners are attending Veeamon as well. We have separate sort of cordoned off content, specifically for our partners. So they're definitely a key part of that. We have 38 sponsors that are a part of our ecosystem. And so partners kind of overall are a really key part of Veeamon in addition to customers attending as well. So that's one way that we continue to connect with our partners. Bill, that's part of the TAM expansion. Obviously it's leverage, right? Absolutely it is. And we'll stay with that two-tier distribution system that we have, effectively with those partners and distributors as to how we work through them. Partners are an absolutely key for us all around the globe. Different kinds of partners in the US, rather large ones, a lot of small ones, same in Amia and same in APJ. So we'll keep that network going. Why? Because they're an extension of the Veeam arm of our internal sales group that numbers well over 2,000 of our people that focus on the selling. But the partners are key. They've adapted nicely, I believe to a lot of virtual events like we're going through now. And they too sound like they're as excited as we are about getting things back in person. So I've always been fascinated by TAM expansion. It's part of the CEO's job. You know, I love the fact that insight, the board promoted from within somebody, they tapped a new CEO who knew the business. You had to do a reset. Now you're at $5 billion valuation. Part of your job was to grow the business, grow the TAM, grow, grow, grow. That's the mantra. And so in thinking about your TAM expansion, cast an acquisition, cloud, you guys have been into the SaaS backup world for a bit now, it's starting to produce. How are you thinking about the future and the opportunities ahead? We've got great opportunities with cast and so into the Kubernetes space. That's a huge market expansion for us and an evolving marketplace. So our goal was, let's be that thought leader. Let's get the best technology that's out there. And then you'll see us execute really well this on the sales side this year also and 2021 here and beyond. The public cloud piece with Azure, with AWS, with our Google offering. So we're continuing to bring those up to speed in a sense of size because there's this tremendous future there. That's a big expansion of our TAM also. I think Jim might talk a little bit about jumping into that security space a little bit that is going to be big, it's big for us. It's a selling feature that I think has come a long way. So it is about expanding that TAM and our focus is always long-term. It is, yeah, evaluation is important, but more important is that long-term customer service, meaning new products for them like Office 365 that we brought out that has had tremendous growth for us. So we're really excited about the growth. But again, our focus is on for that customer over the long-term. It's years out, it's not the quarters and it's not about that valuation. It's really about how we keep them going in their business. So Jim, talk about that positioning. I mean, you're not a security company. You're not like building firewalls and perimeters and so forth, but the notion of security and data protection plays in there. I mean, you think about these ransomware attacks. If I can actually recover from a ransomware attack, I got way more leverage in your part of that recovery process. So those lines are blurring. How do you think about it? Yeah, that's definitely a key benefit that our solution provides in terms of protection from that. And as we've had new releases into the market, V10 last year, V11 this year, we've continued to up the ante relative to protection from ransomware. That's obviously a hot topic in the marketplace and we have some great differentiators that we've brought to market. And I think that that's part of why we're seeing the strong growth. V11, focus on ransomware, but over 200 new features and capabilities that we have brought to market to make it easier for our customers. We have kind of three key pillars around simplicity, flexibility, reliability, and also just super powerful with the features and capabilities that we bring to market. So we're seeing great traction there. And that's definitely an area that we're focused on as again, we're not a security company, but we do protect from that. And some of the capabilities give you, if you do run into that situation, the capability to recover quickly and not have to pay a ransom and keep your business running, which is a key focus for us across all of our 400,000 plus customers. What about cloud? Cloud is a, you know, a lot of people, you know, that are traditionally on-prem vendors, they're like threatened by cloud, but cloud's a gift for Veeam. I mean, it's like the internet is a gift. It's this big platform that's been built out, you can build on top of it. So how are you guys thinking about, about the cloud opportunity and the SaaS data protection? Yeah, I feel you want to go and then I'll go. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, sorry, Jim. Yeah, it is a tremendous market opportunity for us. We've evolved as you know, back to our roots in 06, it was about protecting those virtual workloads. And we've evolved from there with, evolved from there, maintaining that, that on-prem businesses is not going away. The public cloud business is skyrocketed, the private cloud business the same way. And we want to have products for all of those. And the ability to move and move data, move workloads around, move those data around, move that data around. So big piece for us, the cast and piece, I keep getting back to it, how that might evolve with the SaaS offering or not, we'll tell over time period here as we work on that product roadmap. So absolutely tremendous opportunity for us. Well, when you think about hybrid, Jim, I mean, the first thing that people say is for developers, you know, containers, first thing you do is containerize the app. And then you don't care where it run anywhere, right at once run it anywhere. That's a big opportunity. Yeah, so we're definitely focused on building a single platform for all environments. So with the storage integration, with the top three hyperscalers, moving into Kubernetes and containers, backup and protection. So that's a key part of our strategy to again, to make it easy for customers to be able to manage all their backup from one single console. So that's a key strategy. And we're, you know, the research that we've done, I think, you know, due to COVID, we're actually seeing an increase in the move to the cloud. And we play in two key areas. One is with the hyperscalers and providing, you know, the backup and recovery within those environments, but then also with our service providers. And as a service, we're seeing really strong growth within that market and that ecosystem. So, you know, working to partner with them closely and continue to build that ecosystem and support them and their efforts to drive growth in the market as well. All right, I'm going to let you guys go. But last question, Bill, is, so what's life like with insight? I know these guys are players. We've seen the moves they make. What's the future like? Is IPO still on the table? What can you tell us about life with insight? It's a great question. Well, keep in mind, we worked with insight in our prior entity starting in, I think in 2002, we brought them in. So, and our partner that's on our account has been with us since that time, even though after we sold the business, they were out of beam. So, know them really well. They've been a big help. They're operations, operationally efficiently focused. I'd say they're helping us bring new ideas back to the M&A activity back to your IPO question. I think that's an avenue for us. We clearly are pushing in that direction to get set up that way. What's it do for us? It gives us that bigger currency versus just cash. It gives you that stock currency to use on M&A activity that, you know, I think you saw us do that with Kaston in the sense of acquiring M&A. That's been different for Veeam. We've built it from within. That was a buy from outside. You'll see us do both of those in the future. Very important. I think, you know, without being too predictive, I would say hopefully that's something you see in the IPO side that in the next 12, 24 months a run like that. Well, hey, and as an upside observer, the street wants growth. They want execution. They want consistency. And you guys bring all those. So guys, thanks so much for coming back in theCUBE. Always a pleasure and look forward to seeing you face to face, hopefully before 22. That would be nice. All right, thank you Dave. Thanks Dave. All right. You're welcome. All right, keep it right there. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE's continuous coverage of Veeam on 2021, the virtual edition. We'll be right back.