Earlier this month, Veeam Software announced it had acquired Kasten, a market leader for Kubernetes Backup and Disaster Recovery, in a cash and stock transaction valued at $150M.  Veeam and Kasten's modern data management platform is expected to speed the production deployment of container-based applications.

To better understand, VMblog spoke with Danny Allan, CTO of Veeam.

VMblog:  Can you start by telling us about this acquisition, and what factors lead to this deal between Veeam and Kasten?

Danny Allan:  We're seeing an explosion of cloud-native adoptions and usage, and Kubernetes-native backup is one of the most critical needs for these environments. As seen by 451 Research, nearly three-quarters of organizations are currently using or planning to use Kubernetes within the next two years. We see this creating a massive opportunity for the future of data protection, and Kasten stood out to us as an industry-recognized leader that addresses this need with market leading technology and marquee customers across the world. Further, this acquisition reinforces our commitment to support customers' business transformation to future-ready architectures by delivering modern data protection and radically simplified data management for enterprises.

VMblog:  Kasten was announced as a new Veeam partner back in May, was the acquisition a part of the plan from the beginning?

Allan:  It wasn't exactly the top priority as we entered the initial partnership, but it was on our minds from the start. After a successful few months of the partnership, it rather naturally proved to be the next logical step in the journey of the relationship after assessing such positive feedback from our customers.

VMblog:  How will Veeam incorporate Kasten's tech into its offerings?  What benefit will customers see from the integration?

Allan:  We see this as a truly advantageous relationship on both sides. For Kasten, they'll be joining the leader in Backup solutions that deliver Cloud Data Management. For Veeam, we're adding the leader in Kubernetes backup in one of our fastest growing adjacent markets. Together, Veeam and Kasten are highly complementary and positioned as the one-stop-shop for data protection across our customers' enterprise infrastructures. Additionally, we're excited that our customers are able to purchase and deploy the software needed to protect all their workloads: physical, virtual, cloud and container-based.  There is no need to wait for a future integration.

VMblog:  What has the reaction been to this deal from customers?  Was Kubernetes support something they've been asking for a while?

Allan:  Our customers have been incredibly receptive and welcoming to the deal. Customers of all segment sizes had been looking for container support and were excited to test and try Kasten's solutions when the partnership was first announced. We're also seeing our customers recognize the partnership will deliver continued benefits with an integrated data protection and management platform that consolidates the backup policy and recovery capability into a single software experience.  As business operations, regulatory compliance and cyber-resiliency are executive and board level topics, Veeam is now able to provide the comprehensive visibility and controls that our customers have been asking for.

VMblog:  There have been a few of these Kubernetes company acquisitions on the market recently.  Was Veeam tracking this trend?  What makes your deal with Kasten different?

Allan:  There certainly has been some activity in the market of late, but there are a number of significant differences within this deal. Mainly, Kasten uniquely looks at backup in Kubernetes from an application standpoint. The other deals taking place have been from a storage perspective. Kasten said this was not the right model for the Kubernetes world, because it missed the context of the application, which spans architectures and storage models. One could say this approach is similar to what we were doing in the early days of Veeam, when others in the industry were using agents or taking snapshots from the storage, we thought a better way to do things was by going from the hypervisor.

VMblog:  What do the two companies have planned for organizational structure?  Will Kasten become Veeam employees, and how will the executive teams look?

Allan:  Kasten will operate as a standalone Kubernetes Business Unit within Veeam. Kasten's founders, Niraj Tolia and Vaibhav Kamra, will lead the business unit with Tolia as its President and General Manager, reporting to Veeam's CEO, Bill Largent, and Kamra as Chief Technology Officer, Kubernetes BU. All teams including sales, marketing, R&D, and customer service will stay intact to continue growing the business with increased investment in people and resources. We foresee this as a great opportunity to grow our talent pool, adding folks to join the Kasten Kubernetes Business Unit team in the near future.

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