 From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of VeeamON 2020. Brought to you by Veeam. Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman and this is theCUBE's coverage of VeeamON 2020 online. Really happy to welcome to the program. We've done VeeamON for many years, first time doing it online and we have two first time guests in the center square. We have Daniel Freed, he is the GM and Senior Vice President of AMIA and the head of worldwide panels. And sitting on the other side of the screen is David Harvey, he's the Vice President of Strategic Alliances, both of them, of course, with Veeam. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. All right, Daniel, maybe start with you. The online event obviously gives us, there's some challenges, but there's also some opportunities rather than thousands of us gathering in Las Vegas where it looks like. There's a diversity of locations because if you look up and down the street, the strip, instead, we really have a global event and an opportunity. I'm speaking to you, where you are in Asia right now. What does the online event mean and how you can relate to, how many countries do you have attending the event this year? So the good thing about being online is, as you mentioned, as you said, is we can have all people from all countries, all around the world being present, of course, virtually. Now, with my responsibility, my worldwide responsibility for the channels, all countries in the world, we have partners in all countries in the world, which means that all our teams, as well as all our partners, our virtual teams, are the key elements of joining that event today. So that's why I'm very, very happy to have this virtual event, which is much easier than having all people who try flying in from all the different parts of the world to Vegas. Right, and David, also with Alliance's standpoint, I assume since they don't actually have to fly to Vegas, we've got the special guest appearances by Satya Nadella, Arvind Krishna, all of the Andy Jassi, everyone's coming in, but no, in all seriousness, from an Alliance standpoint, I would love to hear how you're working with the partner for the global event. Yeah, no, absolutely. And security's having a tough time keeping them at bay right now. I mean, the online thing is handy because we can just cut them off, but you're exactly right. The support of the Alliance's has been fantastic. Everyone's trying to adjust to this new world we're in, but what you're seeing this week is a fantastic response by the Alliance's to want to make the partnership really work. And we're doing the same for their events and it's just a really nice sort of camaraderie that's coming together. And so they've been great in supporting us as you're seeing through the week. And we're excited about the overall vibe that we're getting and the commitment that we're getting from the customers and from the Alliance's, which is really, really good. Excellent. Well, we know that Veeam is 100% partner focus. Daniel, maybe let's start with you. What's new kind of in the last year, since we were together at Veeam on last year? So on the new things that we have been doing for the last year is actually continuing first to move with our 100% partner move since the beginning of Veeam and all the way to the following years, to the next quarters. But more importantly in that is definitely the move that we see with working with the Alliance's and their partners as well as working much more with the service providers, meaning the cloud service providers, where there is a big, big, big trend now in the market with customers requesting more and more services rather than, I would say, technologies and products on premise. So we see that happening everywhere around the world. It is accelerating now, again, with the situation that we see worldwide because of this bad situation where virtual is a big move that we can see from customers and the partners that we have, the ecosystem that we've built, all around the world is helping very much in this move. Excellent. And David would love to hear the progress that your group's been making with some of the partners. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's been a really exciting ride. Our year-over-year growth rates with the Alliance's continue to shoot up, which we're really excited about. The V10 launch was fantastic for us for most of our major strategic alliances. So we're really pleased about that. And a lot of our technical alliances as well, they really benefited from some of the new capability coming out there. So what we're seeing is not only are we seeing our go-to market be enriched more and have a lot of success with the strategic alliances, the technology alliances are really starting to benefit from some of that new innovation that just came out. And finally, as well, some of the global systems integrators, we've seen a massive uptick in that interest in the last couple of quarters. And that's really helping to help us into that enterprise space. So yeah, it's been a really exciting year. And certainly when you do these types of events virtually, you're LinkedIn, you're IM, and the text messages go through the roof, which is a nice way to keep communication with the alliances. Yeah, David, I'd like to just drill in a little bit on some of the pieces that you're talking about there. I really feel in the last year, we saw a real maturation in what we talk about in hybrid cloud and multi-cloud. I know one of the key strategic alliances actually, from day one for Veeam, of course, was VMware. And every time I saw an announcement of some of the VMware cloud pieces, I usually felt like there was soon after a Veeam piece of it. Could you bring us inside a little bit, especially some of the cloud pieces and maybe how Veeam differentiate from some of the competition out there, both VMware, Amazon, Microsoft, and that whole ecosystem? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as you touched on, VMware and us have been very close throughout this process and we're really excited about some of the recent work that's been going on with them as well. We also have tremendous steps forward with Amazon. That continues to be a strong area. And the Microsoft deserve cloud and the way that we continue to enhance the way we work with their solution is really providing great strides forwards, especially for the enterprise customers. We also were excited about the recent announcement related to Google Cloud as well. So that's another big area for us. And so that was another thing that continues to differentiate us. And what I would say overall though is it's about having that philosophy as customers continue to have their philosophical view related to on-premise cloud and off-premise cloud. What we're showing you is whether it's through the hardware partners, whether it's through the application partners or through the cloud partners, we're enabling you to decide your workflows. And I think that's a little bit different than some of the others that are out there. Taking that heritage that we've got in the virtual world and that mentality that certain IT departments have it enables us to really synergize with those different partners as they go through their evolution. And as certain customers move more towards the public cloud and they maybe look towards some workplace back to the private that synergy between all of those areas is hugely important. And even for the hardware partners that we have who have cloud plays, we're augmenting some of their value solutions as well. So it's a really sort of heterogeneous world that it we're really pleased on the way that the market is accepting it. Yeah, and Daniel, that this move and maturation of what's happened to the cloud has had a significant impact on the channel. Love to hear anything specifically with your viewpoint on the channel as to how your partners are now adjusting to that, VMware, Microsoft, some of the other pieces as to how they're now ready to help customers through these transitions. Yeah, and let me make one remark which is very important. First of all, Veeam is not a cloud provider and will not be a cloud provider. In other words, the idea is that we will never compete with our partners, never. So we provide technology which is used by our partners and the number of them are using that technology to provide services. A number of them are using this technology to resell or to implement some additional services for their end customers. So this is a key, key element. We're not there to do anything in competition. We are here to complement and to use and to leverage as much as possible all our partners as much as we can. They know very good the market. They know very good how things are moving. They know very good what they can do. They know very good what they cannot do and what their customers want or don't want. So the big, big move that we see in the market is how everyone is moving more and more to, again, as I said initially, to the cloud. I mean, providing cloud services, whether it's multi-cloud or hybrid cloud, as you mentioned it, as you listed them, we have all different types of scenarios. And this is a very interesting thing is us helping them, educating them on how to use our technology to be able to very quickly provide services and capabilities to their end customer. So we have a big, big investments in this enablement in what we call sales acceleration at Beam Software because it's all about businesses and helping our partners to get there and to move them as fast as possible. Again, there is a big, a big need, a big request from the end customers and a lot of the partners understand that and have to move very quickly to this new world of services. And we are there to help and support because we strategically know that this is the way, not only for Beam, but for the entire market. Yeah, Daniel, an important point. I think anybody that thinks that Beam is a competitor to the channel or things, but probably doesn't understand the core value proposition of Beam. What I'm curious from your standpoint is, what was the impact of Beam being acquired now by Insight, obviously some management changes there. I'm curious what feedback you've gotten and how that impact the channel first. Yeah, I mean, let's be for open as you know, it's one of, I hope one of our policies at Beam is transparency and the way we communicate again with the world, especially with our partners. So initially the feedbacks that I had and with a number of partners and big partners were a little bit of worries. What is going to happen? What is next? Are we going to lose the Beam culture? Are we going to go through a number of changes eventually in the strategy of Beam? And actually I have to say, and I'm extremely comfortable in my, let's say regular communications and connections with the Insight partners who have acquired Beam software because they think that the strategy that we had and the strategy that we have now is the strategy they want just to keep on doing because it is a successful strategy. And by the way, when we look at the data that we got from the market from IDC that was out lately, we see that Beam is the number one in growth all around the world compared to all the other vendors doing the same kind of technology. That means that it is a successful strategy. Going with the partners and through the partners is a very successful strategy. And there is no reason that that will be changed. And Insight partners understands that extremely good and they feel very comfortable with our future. There will be more to us but that we'll see in the coming quarters. Well, I think we do need to make sure that Beam has a little bit more focus on getting some green in your home environments there. Cause normally if I'm doing an interview with green I'm expecting with Beam, I'm expecting a little bit more of the bright green there. David, obviously the strategic alliances, some of those executive relationships are very important. Bring us in a little bit as Daniel was saying there's a little bit of crepidation at the bit and they've worked through it from the alliance standpoint. What does this transact and what's transpired? Yes, Stuart, it's one of those things it's a really unexciting answer because the simple answer is calmness. After 24 hours once we announced it my call sheet was pretty, pretty empty for the simple reason being that we spoke into everybody very quickly and their resonant feedback was that's great news. We know insight, we trust insight, we're glad that it's a growth play. Also it clears up the future and obviously when you have strategic alliances there's always at the back of their mind wondering well is one of our competitors going to come in and acquire you guys? Your overall feedback was this is fantastic. This is exactly what we wanted to see. You provide clarity to our partnership. You can continue to invest and grow which you've demonstrated for years and you can move that forwards for the next few years but also more importantly this enables us to feel even better doubling down on Veeam. And so frankly while we haven't had any issues and I'm sure a lot of the viewers out there have been through events have seen sometimes that can be crazy. To Daniel's point the strategy hasn't changed we're executing, we've got the support and the strategic alliances both on the executive level and also the day-to-day level are leaning in more and more and pleased that we're executing on our strategy focusing in the US with a big push bringing the investment moving forward stabilizing leadership team. It's just been overall, it's been fantastic. So yeah, it's a really unexciting new soundbite answer but that calmness and clarity has been a real takeaway. Excellent, well one of the key messages in the keynote of course was talking about digital transformation. We'd love to hear from both of you what you're seeing and hearing how Veeam's message is engaging with both partners and ultimately the end user itself. Daniel, maybe we'll start with you on that. Yeah, thanks for asking. It's usually always comes from the end customers and their needs and we all know that the needs for data is getting exponential. So that is why we can't do things manually anymore so it has to be digitalized everywhere. And the very interesting thing is that digitalization is not only something that takes place with the end customers but we see it more and more because it's an absolute need when partners are providing services or providing online services, cloud services or providing even products, they have to digitalize also themselves and they are doing it at very, very high speed. But I'm mentioning that because I'm extremely pleased with the ecosystems of partners that we have because they understand very good how the market is evolving and it's not only about the customers but it's also about themselves that they are evolving extremely fast and digitalization of all the processors or the way they work with the end customers is certainly one of the key elements which is going to be extremely good for the future. That's why because of all these moves in a very positive dynamic way there is no reason why as Veeam we should change our strategies and no remaining 100% channel, indirect, buy-ins first, whatever it is, having a large ecosystem, continue driving the ecosystem, building the ecosystem, organizing the ecosystem is absolutely key for the success of everyone including Veeam or Augustine. Great, and David please from the alliance side. Yeah, Stu, I'm sure you'll notice better than anybody and we're in a fortunate situation and we probably both get to sit through all of the strategies that a lot of the titans of industry are focused on right now and having an ecosystem we do on the alliance side that rich tapestry from the very large to the very small is focused on that digital transformation and I think the good news from my point of view and I'm going to touch on one of the points Daniel mentioned before was we don't compete with them and so the advantage we've got is we're plugging a piece of that strategy that they're looking for. The criticality of data through this transformation is huge as everybody knows and what we're finding right now is that the approach that we take, the approach to focus on doing what we do extremely well is synergizing with the evolution that the customer is seeing as they go through that transformation and transformation sometimes is scary. Transformation sometimes brings nervousness and they want to do it with a lot of their thought leaders they're working with, the VMware, the Microsoft, the HPs and their apps, et cetera. And so from that point of view the fact that we can provide them with that piece of mind for the complete solution has been fantastic. So, you know, when you look at 75 plus partners there's always going to be one where you need to thread the needle shall we say on exactly where your intellectual property provides that value to them. But the good news is we don't have to spend a lot of time on that because we're clear, we're concise and a lot of times they've been involved in a lot of our strategy sessions. So they're on board with us and I think to Daniel's area as well with the channel the channel sees that as well and that's why whether it's through the Alliance is channel or with us directly to the resellers we're finding that harmony is bringing a lot of peace of mind so you can focus on the pains of the customer and not worry about your technology partners fighting with themselves. And that's really where we pride the overall ethic of the company. All right, well the final item I have for both of you is, you know, normally, you know that we have a certain understanding of where we are and what the roadmap looked like. Of course, we're dealing with a global pandemic right now. So as we look forward to the outlook I'd love to be able to hear a little bit about what you're hearing from your partners how that is coloring, you know decisions that are made really for the rest of 2020 kind of the next 12 months or so and you know, any other data points that you have from your broad perspectives as to how people think the recovery is going to be and obviously we understand there's a lot of uncertainty. So Daniel, you've got a great global viewpoint we understand, you know, what is happening impacts differently locally quite a bit but what are you seeing going forward and you know, the impact of the pandemic? Yeah, so I couldn't say the contrary it is absolutely correct and we see it in our numbers that the countries which are the most impacted by the COVID have a little bit more difficulties than the others to move forward from a business standpoint which everybody understands but we really see it in the numbers. Now, the thing, and this is what I like very much about our ecosystem and even software is we had a plan that we set in 2019 before anything about COVID, a plan for 2020. And you know what, we are now in our quarter the second quarter of the month of the year Q2 and we are going to make our numbers we are going to make our plan and why are we going to make it? That's only because it is being because we have a fantastic product but it is very, very much because of all our partners who despite all the issues that they are encountering because of COVID are just getting there fighting, helping themselves, helping us and all together as a big business machine as a big business system, we are just making success. And these will suddenly show extremely good at the end of the year when we look at the market share that BIM is going to gain again with all our partners. It will be the results of the success. So good results, very good results. And BIM is just continuing to move with this network of partners. And David, obviously we've seen, you know many of the big partners, you know being, you know, very circumspect in their response you know, nobody wants to be seen as, you know doing something that is untoward towards customers taking care of these customers. So, you know, how's this impacting, you know what you're doing with your partners and gives a little bit of the outlook going forward. Yeah, I mean, what I'd use for this is energy. Some of these headlines that you see of course that they're going to get picked up with the impact related to it. On a day-to-day basis through the discussions with the executives at the field level we're seeing the energy, we're seeing people want to make sure that you capitalize on what is a tricky situation and certainly a very impactful situation. But we're not seeing people be resigned to it. We're seeing people really want to make sure that they are oscillating to the needs of their customers today, whether it's more endpoint whether it's more towards the user experience but also taking this time to keep building a foundation for a lot of that infrastructure related to data protection, data availability that we've enjoyed for a long period of time. So, you know, you have a degree of disruption but the core objective that I'm seeing from all the major guys that are out there is let's make sure we drive hard. Let's not take the pedal off the metal. Let's not use this as an excuse. Let's keep moving forward. I mean, I would say our engagement with them has increased in sort of this happened. And so I don't think we ever expected to be running at the tempo we're running. Beam does it as standard but we don't normally have that same tempo from some of the alliances. We're really pushing hard with them. So we're excited that we continue to evolve through this current situation. Everyone's going to be poised with a lot of aggression, a lot of desire to keep capitalizing on the work we've done together to keep solving the customer demands that are going to come over the next 18 to 24 months and really make sure that this is really impactful just to be clear, but not one that we're going to let define our future and we're going to do that together. So I think from us, we're excited about not only has Daniel said Beam's success but what we're starting to see is some really good attitudes from all of our alliance partners, which we love to see. All right, well, Daniel and David, thank you so much for the update. Great to be able to talk with you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks. All right, lots more coverage from Veeamon 2020 online. I'm Stu Miniman and thank you for watching theCUBE.