Veeam Software, the innovative provider of solutions that deliver Availability for the Always-On Enterprise, has expanded its work with Cisco by launching the direct snapshot integration with the Cisco HyperFlex hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platform. The integration of Veeam Availability Suite with the software-defined networking and computing power of Cisco UCS with the Cisco HyperFlex HX Data Platform is designed to deliver simplicity and enhance efficiency in the modern hybrid cloud era, with Veeam enabling enterprises to reduce backup and recovery times and improve overall operational performance.

Enabling Digital Transformation via the Hybrid Cloud

It is increasingly understood that digital transformation is a critical imperative for enterprises worldwide, irrespective of size or vertical market. Organizations that fail to create value, growth and competitive advantage through new digital offerings and business models risk major consequences including long-term business irrelevance. At the heart of this transformation is the hybrid cloud.

IDC forecasts that public IT cloud services revenue will exceed $203.4 billion by 2020, recording a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.5 percent - almost seven times the rate of overall IT market growth. In 2019, public IT cloud services will drive a fifth of the $716 billion aggregate revenue generated by the need for applications, development and deployment tools, infrastructure software, storage, and servers. By 2018, more than half of enterprises' IT infrastructure and software investments will be cloud based (private and public), reaching 60 to 70 percent of IT spend by 2020.

Organizations are now reassessing their data centers and embracing a hybrid cloud strategy to meet the challenge of digital transformation. However, maintaining Availability across a hybrid cloud environment is not easy. Which is why today's news, seeing Veeam operate deeper on the Cisco HyperFlex platform, means businesses can realize not only the increased efficiency and adaptability benefits of Cisco HyperFlex and the computing power of Cisco UCS, but with the integration of Veeam, ensure data remains available 24.7.365 across a multi-cloud environment.

Achieve Advanced Availability with Veeam and Cisco HyperFlex

"Reducing recovery time for data and applications is paramount for businesses, that's why today's announcement is so important for the market," said Peter McKay, President and Chief Operating Officer, Veeam. "By combining Veeam's proven Availability solutions with Cisco's next-generation HyperFlex platform, we can offer customers unmatched data and application availability. This means a business can realize its investment in IT, without the production downtime that stifles its ability to execute and deliver innovative products and services to customers."

Today's news builds on a successful collaboration between Veeam and Cisco, which began in 2013 with joint solutions based on Cisco UCS server technology and Veeam Availability Suite. Now, as businesses place more critical data and systems online to reap the benefits of digital transformation and utilize data to make better, more informed business decisions, management of that data has become more critical.

"Digital transformation is driving explosive growth for Cisco HyperFlex," said Kaustubh Das, Cisco VP, Product Management, Storage. "Veeam's data protection solution is now deeply integrated with HyperFlex. This integration helps our customers realize the full potential of a next-gen, hyperconverged infrastructure while allowing for rapid business adaptability, minimizing risk, and decreasing downtime for today's 24.7.365 operations."

Key benefits of Veeam direct integration with Cisco HyperFlex include:

• Improved Recovery Point Objectives - Using Backups from Storage Snapshots enables the user to run a backup at any time and any frequency, reducing a business' exposure to data loss.
• Minimized Impact on Production - Not using VMware VM snapshots means the high impact of snapshot create and delete operations are eliminated. This dramatically reduces the performance impact on production VMs during the copy process.
• Accelerated Backups - Potentially improves copy speed up to twice as much compared to the standard VMware vSphere APIs, through the unique ability to backup data directly from the file system with asynchronous reads when using Veeam Availability Suite 9.5.
• Agentless Application Aware Backup - Across multiple applications, such as Microsoft Active Directory, Exchange, SharePoint, SQL Server and Oracle.
• Storage Replication - Customers can now replicate Cisco HyperFlex workloads to another HyperFlex System or to any other VMware vSphere environment including Veeam Cloud & Service Providers by using Veeam's VM Replication functionality.

Veeam's direct integration with Cisco HyperFlex will be available globally in Q2 CY2017.