Veeam Software, the innovative provider of solutions that deliver Availability for the Modern Data Center, today announced that initial customer adoption of Veeam Availability Suite v8 has exceeded all expectations. Thirty thousand (30,000) organizations registered pre-launch interest in the solution, illustrating the growing requirement for companies to deliver the Always-On Business, and within its first 90 days of release more than 36 percent of existing customers (45,000) upgraded to Veeam Availability Suite v8. In addition, wider interest in the solution has been phenomenal, with customers, prospects and partners downloading at a rate of more than 1,200 downloads per day.

When specifically asked about the upgrade experience to the new version:

• Almost two thirds of organizations stated that the upgrade process took a “matter of minutes”
• Compared to upgrading with other software vendors, 94 percent said that Veeam Availability Suite v8 set a new standard in simplicity
• Furthermore, 91 percent of customers handled the upgrade process internally with no help from an external consultant, thereby illustrating its ease of use
• Nearly three quarters of respondents indicated that the v8 release exceeded their expectations or they were very satisfied since completing the upgrade process
• Top features/benefits were Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Active Directory (21 percent), enhancements to Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange (19 percent), Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server (18 percent) and replication enhancements (17 percent)

“Today’s users are more demanding than ever before, generating ever-increasing amounts of data and they expect 24/7 access to applications and data – this places an immense burden on IT to deliver,” said Ratmir Timashev, CEO at Veeam. “Organizations that fail to deal with this ‘availability gap’ [the gap between the requirements of the Always-On Business and IT’s ability to effectively deliver] will falter in the coming year. Veeam is committed to addressing the availability gap through innovation, and Veeam Availability Suite v8 tackles this issue head-on. Customer adoption has been strong and initial feedback in the solution’s first-quarter on the market has been outstanding. We are excited at what Veeam Availability Suite v8 can offer our users and it seems that they [our customers] share our enthusiasm.”

According to recent research, 82 percent of CIOs admit that they are unable to meet their business’s need for immediate, always-on access to IT services. This availability gap has immediate costs: application failure costs enterprises more than $2 million a year in lost revenue, productivity, opportunities and data irretrievably lost through backups failing to recover. Veeam Availability Suite v8 bridges the availability gap by providing customers a new kind of solution, an availability solution, delivering recovery time and point objectives (RTPO) of less than 15 minutes for ALL applications and data.

With more than 200 new features and enhancements, Veeam Availability Suite v8 leverages the technologies of the modern data center: virtualization, modern storage and cloud. It provides five key capabilities enabling the Always-On Business, which are:

• High-Speed Recovery: Rapid recovery of what you want, the way you want it. For example, user can restore quickly and easily from Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, NetApp and HP storage snapshots and more with Veeam Explorers
• Data Loss Avoidance: Near-continuous data protection (near-CDP) and streamlined disaster recovery; for example, users can create ultra-fast backups from NetApp and HP storage snapshots with Built-in WAN Acceleration to get backups off site up to 50x faster. Additionally, one can create fast and secure cloud backup with Veeam Cloud Connect as well as end-to-end encryption which secures data during backup, in flight and at rest
• Verified Protection: Guaranteed recovery of every file, application or virtual server, every time.
• Leveraged Data: Using backup data to create an exact copy of your production environment.
• Complete Visibility: Proactive monitoring and alerting of issues before operational impact.

What users say about Veeam Availability Suite v8:

“This marriage of two technologies [Veeam Availability Suite v8 with NetApp integration] is like Peanut Butter & Banana sandwiches to Elvis,” said Nick Howell, Virtualization Solutions Architect at NetApp.

“We consider Veeam Cloud Connect [as part of Veeam Availability Suite v8] to be a real game-changer, offering exceptional flexibility for backup storage,” said Nicki Pereria, CTO at Zettagrid.

“Installing Veeam Availability Suite v8 was a breeze compared to our previous solution,” said Mario Anger, Sr. Manager – Systems, at The University of British Columbia. “The upgrade was seamless and we conservatively predict that it [Veeam Availability Suite v8] will reduce our backup window by at least 70 percent. One of the main reasons we engaged with Veeam for this upgrade was its NetApp integration, and we have high hopes for how the deployment will transform our operations.”

"Thanks to Veeam Availability Suite v8 and its storage integration with NetApp, we finally managed to complete the backup infrastructure refresh project we started more than a year ago,” stated Flavio Gatto, IT Manager at Doimo Cityline S.r.l. “Leveraging NetApp storage snapshots to make backups and restores with Veeam translates to real value for our company. We now sleep well knowing our data is properly protected.”

“I have never used an availability application that I was this impressed with... until now,” commented Samuel Sanders, Assistant Vice President – Information Technology at Surrey Bank and Trust. “[Of Veeam Availability Suite v8] The ease of use; the intuitiveness of the interface, the feature set. It has all the features we need and nothing we don't. In an industry with so many mediocre solutions, it is a breath of fresh air. Finally, someone has created the perfect backup, replication and disaster recovery suite.”

To learn more visit www.veeam.com.