The Rajmahal Theatre, famous for its larger-than-life performances, came alive with ‘enterprise-changing’ thoughts and best practices on Availability and Backup with the VeeamON Forum 2017 closing on a high note at the Dubai Parks and Resorts on 15th November, 2017.
The event was last in the chain of the global tour that travelled attractive locations like; Hanau, Paris, Milan, Johannesburg, Istanbul, London, Prague and Moscow; that connected leading IT experts and visionaries throughout the region to share and learn how to ensure Availability for the Always-ON Enterprise and deliver a seamless Digital Life Experience.
Enterprise Channels MEA had the opportunity of visiting the event held in Dubai and speaking to some of the key partners and delegates at the event about the VeeamON Forum 2017 experience.
Glimpses
Senior Veeam Executives presented keynote sessions exploring the ‘Digital Future’ – how user demands, driven by digital transformation, are changing daily with users wanting a seamless digital experience and 24.7.365 access to data and applications. In this scenario, enterprises are having to re-think their IT strategies and service models, and Availability is of paramount importance.
Graham Porter, Head of Channels for Middle East at Veeam said, “The number of attendees at the VeeamOn Forum are growing. 80% of the attendees are our end-users and potential customers. At the event, we are talking about the Veeam v10 and some upgrade packs as well and about the key API’s – Application Programming Interfaces. We have got partners like HPE, Microsoft, NetApp, Alpha Data etc. We have signed reseller agreements with HPE, NetApp and Cisco as well recently. The eco-system and the partners are growing and by December, we should be a $800 million company and by 2019 we aim to touch $1bn.”
Recent major customer wins show momentum in high-level projects, including: Dubai Duty Free, Jumeirah Group, Al Naboodah Group Enterprises (ANGE), King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology (KACST), Electronic Government Authority (EGA) of Ras Al Khaimah, and National Bank of Abu Dhabi.
Tom Daley, Consultant- BIOS Middle East said, “ “BIOS Middle East is proud of our Partnership and association with Veeam Software. Veeam gives customers the ability to have their data and applications available 24/7. Today, customers are looking to enhance their user experience by having their business up and running with near zero downtime. BIOS Middle East is a Cloud Service Provider, and as a business, we offer a Managed Secure Cloud in the UAE. We partnered with Veeam for their expertise in virtualization, backup and disaster recovery and we look forward to continuing this strong partnership.”
Saudi Arabia and UAE, the two countries that have traditionally been the highest revenue contributions for Veeam within the region, will continue be critical to Veeam’s future success. The ongoing focus on Smart Cities, Saudi’s Vision 2030 where technology is key to the country’s National Transformation Program, the World Expo 2020 in Dubai, plus trends such as cloud computing, big data, virtualization, security and mobility, make it clear technology has a vital role to play in the Middle East for many years to come. These factors only serve to fuel Veeam’s ability to play a big role in the region’s digital transformation by assisting government agencies and enterprises to remain ‘Always-On’ businesses with its market leading technology.
Najaf Ali, CEO of DataTAG, said, “We became a Veeam partner in early 2015 and have come a long way from there. We are Veeam gold partners and in the upcoming months we aim to be a great addition to the Veeam portfolio by being one such partner that has multiple technical expertise to do any kind of deployment. We are targeting to become the Veeam certified professionals soon. The major advantage that Veeam or Veeam partners have in the market today is that, Backup is ‘in’ demand. A downtime of even 5 mins runs down panic in the nerve of the business and people have increasingly started realizing the need for being available 24/7. Veeam and its partners are ideally positioned in this market to cater to the backup and availability need of the customers.”
“We are seeing a lot of investment in cloud in the Middle East region. The exciting part is we are growing faster than our competitors and also have grown in terms of our partners. Our message to people would be, don’t believe what we say – try our product, see for yourself how easy it is to install it and how it works. A lot of enterprise customers are seriously looking at Veeam,” added Graham.
Gregg Petersen, Regional Sales Vice President, Middle East and Africa, Veeam Software said, “We have had a very positive growth in 2017 and the VeeamON forum is a testament to that growth. The Middle East continues to be a fast-paced growth region, with high levels of innovation and people eager to adopt technologies that drive digitization and ease the burden of growing data management tasks. These ambitions compliment our technology proposition, of enabling businesses in the Middle East to deliver the Digital Life experience users expect with robust levels of data availability. Saudi and UAE have been our high growth countries but we already have a lot of implementations and have a strong momentum in countries like Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman as well and moving to 2018, you will be seeing a lot of case studies and best practices from Veeam in those countries.”
The VeeamON Forum featured Veeam use cases and scenarios addressing critical pain points, real-world strategies and solutions, technology and business sessions.
By Anushree Dixit