Object First, the first object storage backup storage appliance purpose-built for Veeam, announced its official company launch. Created by Veeam co-founders Ratmir Timashev and Andrei Baronov, Object First helps midsize enterprise organizations ransomware-proof their backups by delivering effortless out-of-the-box immutability.

The solution is designed and optimized to be the best storage for Veeam:

• Simple to deploy and scale with no security expertise required.
• Powerful enough to support ultra-fast backups and Instant Recovery.
• Affordable with the best price-performance ratio in the industry.

"With the exponential rise of ransomware, data protection has become a C-level or board-level discussion for every business, large or small," Timashev said. "We are delivering an optimized implementation specifically tailored for data protection with out-of-the-box immutability and hardened security paired with the right level of redundancy and features. Object storage represents a major technological shift to provide new data-driven storage that is completely ransomware immune whether it is running locally or in the cloud."

Businesses fall victim to ransomware attacks every 11 seconds, while year-over-year ransomware attacks increased by 13% - a jump greater than the past five years combined. Backup data provides a means to recover maliciously encrypted data to ensure business continuity. However, with the rapid evolution of cyber threats, backup data has become the primary target as cyber criminals try to prevent any means of recovery after an attack. Thus, immutable backups have become the ultimate defense against ransomware.

Object First recognized the need to help organizations ransomware-proof the largest target in their environment - their backup data. By building a foundation on security and ransomware resiliency from the start, Object First eliminates the need for IT administrators to become security experts.

Key features of Object First include:

• Ransomware-proof: Effortless out-of-the-box immutability eliminates the risk of ransomware infiltrating backup data, while a factory-hardened operating system assures data integrity.
• Simple: Object First can be racked, stacked, and installed in just 15 minutes - not hours or days. Users can scale performance and capacity by simply adding a node. No security expertise is required.
• Powerful: With ingest speeds exceeding 4.0 gigabytes per second, Object First supercharges Instant Recovery, enabling users to run failed workloads directly from backup within minutes.
• Affordable: Offering an unbeatable price-performance ratio, Object First eliminates the need to sacrifice recoverability and availability to meet budget constraints.

Object First also announced that David Bennett has joined the Company as Chief Executive Officer, assuming day-to-day leadership. Bennett, a tech veteran and a seasoned executive with more than 26 years of IT channel leadership, served as Chief Executive Officer at Axcient and Chief Revenue Officer at Webroot prior to joining Object First.

"Object storage is the future of the industry due to the big benefits around scale, reliability, availability, security, cost, and most importantly-easy-to-implement, effortless immutability-and we'll see continued increased adoption for across all industries," said Bennett. "While cloud computing has been a huge driver, we're also going to see more on-premises adoption, as hybrid environments prevail. We launched Object First to help Veeam customers with effortless immutability."

Object First beta is available now, with general availability coming later this year through its growing channel partner ecosystem. For more information about joining the beta program, please visit www.objectfirst.com.