Interview with Omar Akhtar, Regional Manager Channels - Middle East & SAARC, Veeam Software

Omar Akhtar is the Regional Manager Channels - Middle East & SAARC, Veeam Software. He spoke to the DQ Channels about Veeam's strategic Channel partnership in India and also about Veeam's work in other countries.

Omar – I have been travelling to India for the last 3 years. I am the regional manager for the channels for the Middle East-SAARC region. I have 8 channel managers. In my team and I – we work with the partners in the West Asia and India. We will help them to grow in their Veeam proposition, to develop them with their goal to market strategy; we will make sure they have all the support from Veeam. We have had a lot of success in the West Asia and in India, which is good.

Archana – So, have you been expanding in India already?

Omar – India is a very big investment region for Veeam. We are investing very aggressively. If we look at the investments that we have made in the last 3 years, they are quite significant. We have now got 3 offices, in the 3 major metros, Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. We have actually got teams of people within the major metros as well. Sale teams, research guys, we’ve got Channel people, marketing people; we now have a head count of about 20 people. We are still continuing to invest. We’re recruiting more research guys, more sales guys, more Channel guys, just because the opportunity in India is so big for us. We are just going to keep on continuing to invest.

Archana – And you look upon India as a very prospective region for expansion.

Omar – We do, yes, you know Veeam as an availability solutions for the modern data centre. Everything we do is basically around virtualisation and if you look at the modern data centre, it’s built on virtualisation.

Archana – Always-On Enterprise.

Omar – Correct.

Archana – Can you explain it a little bit?

Omar – With Veeam, we offer availability solutions, virtualisation. The modern data centre is built on Veeam or on any other virtualised technologies. With Veeam, with our V-power engine, which is the brain of our technology, we can offer customers rue availability – end-to-end back-up, disaster-recovery, monitoring…to optimise, customers’ virtual instruction. We can help customers go from data centres into the clouds with our availability solutions. Here in India there are massive opportunities for Veeam and for our partners with whom we work as well. In India, Veeam has been active in the market since 2006. They have done a very good job of helping customers to accelerate and reduce their server footprints and get on to virtualisation. They have got 48% of the market share as well. Veeam is very well positioned to help these customers to increase their recovery term objectives and their recovery point objectives. So, India is a very very big opportunity for us in the market.

Archana – Who do you think are your potential competitors?

Omar – I’d say the traditional back up space is quite crowded. There are a lot of players in that space. But when it comes to availability, Veeam is really leading the way. We have changed the game with our unique technologies that we’ve got. Things like instant back up, instant restore, there is no competition to the technologies of Veeam. When we actually visit a customer, we’re not juct talking about back up, we’re talking about availability as a whole; how we can help the customers to achieve it 24x7, always on business. When you go with a complete picture of Veeam, what we’ve got to offer, which is availability, back up, recovery, monitoring and reporting, we don’t really have any competition because of the unique proposition.

Archana – What kind of challenges do you feel that you’re going to face in India, or you’re facing in India?

Omar – We don’t really see any challenges. Veeam as a technology is very simple. If you talk to our customers, the reason why they’ve adopted Veeam is we’re simple and it’s cost effective and it just works, which is our tag line – the technology just works. So, we don’t experience any challenges, we’ve ot a very strong cost of ownership argument with our customers, we can really help them to mitigate cost from their back up strategy. So, we’re not facing any challenges. It’s a very, very big opportunistic market for us at the moment. We’re very well positioned to capitalise on that.

Archana – Is there any new technology that you’re developing specifically for Indian audience?

Omar – That’s a good question. Virtualisation doesn’t just touch India, it touches everyone globally. 97% of the Fortune 500 companies globally use Veeam technology. And we are continually developing our technologies to address the back up challenges and availability challenges that these customers are facing. We’ve just released Veeam version 9 and with this we’ve extended support to HP, EMC, Netact, so we actually integrate with these other storage players. We can also leverage in a feature cloud connect. We can offer existing Veeam customers disaster recovery service. We’ve also extended our explore functionalities as well. We can actually help customers to restore data from back up quicker. We’ve done a lot in terms of developing products for our customers that are virtualised within India.

Archana – Would you like to elaborate your Channel partnership programme?

Omar – Yes, sure. As with all things Veeam, we try to keep everything simple. Our partner programme is very, very simple. It’s very easy for partners to do business with Veeam. We have three partnership levels. We have Registered, we have Silver and we have Gold. There are a lot of rewards that partners can take advantage of, such as extra-deal registry, extra deal registration discounts, rebates, marketing rebate funds, access to beta versions of the latest technologies that are gonna be coming out. So, the partner programme is very simplistic and partners can start Veeam very, very quickly.

Archana – How is your channel partnership in India growing?

Omar – Our partners’ eco-system in India is very diverse. We’re dealing with value-added resellers, we’re dealing with solution providers, we’re dealing with cloud providers, we’re dealing with some of the big, bog global SIs as well, organisations, institutions. We’ve got a big Channel team. We’ve got a Channel team of 4 people, who are servicing our Channel eco-system to manufacture all of their relevant support, the service needs that they get from their customers for availability solutions from Veeam.

Archana – Since you’re talking about the diversity in Channel partnership in India, what kind of strategies you’re evolving?

Omar – We’ve kept it simple. Our partner programme works very nicely for all of the different types of diverse partners that we’re dealing with. These partners can capitalise on the lot of awards that are available to them. And the supplication process is very simple. You just log on to the partner portal. All of the training is free of charge for both sales and technical. So, whether you’re one sales person certified, or a big global SI, or a hundred sales people certified, it’s the same process. It’s very simple.

Archana – Is everything done online?

Omar – Pro-partner is accessible online and all of the information, products information, promotions are on there, our low T-programme is there as well. We really like to have our partners to be very active. We’ve got low-T programme so partners can accumulate points, which they can then use for prices and electronic goods, flights, that sort of thing as well. You can also go there to …downloading event list, the price list is there as well. So it’s really an extension of the Veeam Channel team and it helps partners to run their day to day business.

Archana – Ok. You said you had offices in Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and Bangalore.

Omar – No, we have the offices in Delhi, we have in Mumbai and Bangalore.

Archana – And do you plan to expand to other cities, because…

Omar – We do, yes. We’re having a very focused approach to the market at the moment and we plan to scale out to some of the tier II metros as well.

Archana – Ok. That will touch only the metropolitan cities. But most of India lives not in metropolitan cities. What do you see foresee the future of Veeam in those smaller towns?

Omar – For the smaller metros, this is the value of our partners. The partners are touching these smaller metros and they’re delivering the technology message of availability to the smaller customers so that they are virtualised. We are very well positioned with our partner network who take the message to these tier II and tier III metros.

Archana – How much have you grown so far?

Omar – We’re having a lot of exponential growth. Within India we’re groing at triple digit growth rate. We’re growing rapidly. I can’t divulge the revenues of our company, but in terms of growth, we’re experiencing triple digit growth and it’s a very, very good market for us.

Archana – And how does it compare with say, UAE, or UK or US?

Omar – I think one of the luxuries that you guys have within India is the quality of the technical people. You’ve got a lot of good-skilled, young guys who went to the university, you know, MBAs, IT Sciences, Computer Sciences etc. these guys are all working with the partners which is good and when you’re dealing with them, when you’re explaining to them about the value of Veeam about the availability for the modern data centre, how we can help their customers to achieve a 24x7 business, they really, really get the technology. It helps with the adoption. These guys are evangelising to their customers about Veeam for availability. So, it’s a very, very nice place to do business, because you’ve got such a good technically good community within India.

Archana – But have you heard the recent news that Indian IT industry is actually declining?

Omar – I think I wasn’t aware of that.

Archana – Because mainly these North American continent people – they’re withdrawing from they want to retain their jobs in their own countries…

Omar – Ok. We’ve not experienced any decline in India. We’re growing a triple-digit growth. We’ve got fabulous technology, we’ve got thousands of virtualised customers who are using Veeam within India that we capitalise on. So we’ve definitely not experienced any decline. We’ve not seen any shortage in skills. You’ve got the luxury of havin a lot of good technical people within the market.

Archana – You also work with other SAARC countries.

Omar – We do, yes.

Archana – How has your experience been with India vis-à-vis with them?

Omar – We’re branching to places like Nepal, Bangladesh, we’ve done a good job in Sri Lanka, we’ve got a good partner network there as well. We plan to establish offices in those countries in the future as well and that’s in the road map for us within the SAARC region as well. So we’ll slowly start touching those countries more. We have co-optive partner within those countries today and those partners are doing very good job for us, evangelising about availability to these customers that are virtualised in the other SAARC countries.

Archana – Which are these countries where you’re operating?

Omar – The complete SAARC region. So Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka.

Archana – Do you feel that India gives you an advantage over other SAARC countries or how do you compare?

Omar – India is a big, big country. There is a lot of opportunity here within India. We’ve got a big team of people and we’re very well positioned to capitalise on that. Each individual SAARC country has its own market, so you can’t just place one market and India, just because they’re very, very different and there we love the challenges as well.

Archana – How about Middle east, or West Asia as we call it?

Omar – Middle East from a Channel perspective is still an emerging market. Veeam in the last four and a half years. We’ve had a lot of exponential growth within the Middle East region. Veeam brand is very well established within the Middle East region. We’ve got a team now of about forty people, who serve the Channels there…

Archana – Which are the countries there where you’re operating?

Omar – We’re operating in the whole of the GCC – UAE, Qatar, Saudi, Bahrain, Quwait and well out to the Levant region as well – Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine. In the Middle East region, there is a lot of opportunity for us. There is a lot of virtualisation there as well. Again, we’re doing a very good job of being disruptive in that region, moving customers away from the legacy back up solutions to the availability of the modern data centre from Veeam.

Archana – So you’re also based in UK and you’re working in Middle east, you’re working in SAARC, so when you compare all these, which region do you think is the most advantageous?

Omar – I can’t compare them really, because they’re separate markets. I have been in the Middle East for 7 years, I have been coming to India for 3 years. So it’s very, very difficult to compare them. They are separate markets.

Archana – Do you provide different types of solution there?

Omar – No, we don’t. the reason being, regardless of the market you’re in, virtualisation is virtualisation.

Archana – Yes.

Omar – Whether you’re an SMB customer, enterprise customer, education customer.

Archana – So then why are they markets, because they’re providing the same types of solutions?

Omar – Virtualisation is a technology. It doesn’t differ from market to market. So in terms of server virtualisation, if you virtualise the services, it’s the same whether you’re in the Middle East, whether you’re in India.

Archana – Yes.

Omar – So, there isn’t really much difference. And with Veeam, we are specific for virtualisation, whether it’s Veeam or hyper-Veeam. So different markets don’t affect us, because we’ve got the best technology for availability for these virtualised markets.

Archana – So then, what is the difference? You said that these are different markets.

Omar – The difference is obviously in terms of geographies. In terms of technology, they’re all using virtualisation, they’re very much the same in terms of virtualisation.

Archana – The technology is the same. But the people who are using them are different.

Omar – The people who are using them are different, yes, correct, obviously because they’re from different countries.

Archana – Yes. So, do you feel that their demands are also different or their demands are the same?

Omar – I’d say that their demands from any business which is looking to achieve always on business are pretty much the same. They want to make sure that they can restore within 15 minutes, which we can achieve for them. They want to make sure that whatever is their back up, they can recover from it. And Veeam can give customers a 100% guarantee of recoverability of whatever is their backing up. So, in terms of whether they share the same challenges in making sure that their business is always on – yes. They do share the same challenges. Can Veeam address those challenges? Yes, we can address those challenges.

Archana – Ok. And so far how has your experience been with the Indian partners?

Omar – My experience has been very, very good experience. India has definitely a mature technology, a mature market. You know, I’d say they adopt technology very quickly. They’re very, very technically competent, which is good. They’re very, very self-sufficient. They’re very, very innovative in their approach. They’re not just interested in selling boxes. They’re interested in bringing end-to-end solutions. They’re obviously very conscious about profitability and with Veeam technology, Veeam commodity, Veeam solution, it’s a very good niche for our partners as our partners here in India like.

Archana – Ok, Mr. Omar, thanks for the interview. It was very nice to talk to you. It was a very informative interview.

Omar – Thank you.