Veeam adds to MS 365, Azure backup-as-a-service market

Expanding customer options

Veeam Data Cloud adds to the vendor's portfolio of options for backing up and protecting data in Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365. The company offered Microsoft 365 protection as early as 2016. Veeam offers both a backup software that is deployed on-site and as a managed service deployed and managed by a provider, but as more customers want to subscribe to a service, Veeam decided to offer that as well, the vendor said.

Customers consume services in different manners depending on their needs or how best to take advantage of the service, according to Krista Macomber, an analyst at Futurum Group.

"The biggest advantage is the addition of another deployment option for Veeam's capabilities," she said.

Veeam Data Cloud isn't the only backup-as-a-service offering on the market for services like 365, Macomber said, as it will compete with offerings from vendors such as Clumio, Cohesity, HYCU, Commvault and Azure Backup.

Bertrand also pointed to the fact that most data protection vendors offer Microsoft 365 protection, but added requirements differ from customer to customer.

"There are many different options, because not just one vendor does everything," he said.

There are also plenty of user subscriptions that lack data backup or recovery services, according to Bertrand. As of 2022, Microsoft reported it had 345 million paid seats for Microsoft 365. Veeam estimates that less than 20%, or fewer than 69 million, of those seats are attached to backup and recovery services.

Still room to grow

Beyond 365 and Azure, other SaaS applications need backup and recovery protection. While Veeam didn't get into specifics, the vendor stated that Veeam Data Cloud should be seen as the beginning of Veeam-branded SaaS protection offerings.

Extending support to other SaaS offerings is an interesting area of the data protection market as a whole, as vendors begin to offer more protection, Bertrand said. There is a misguided belief that SaaS providers are backing up data, when that isn't always the case.

"I think there's going to be an arms race for whoever can cover the SaaS application [market]," he said. "It's already starting to happen."

Adam Armstrong is a TechTarget Editorial news writer covering file and block storage hardware, and private clouds. He previously worked at StorageReview.com.