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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