When Veeam acquired N2WS this week for Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud backup, fast-growing startup Druva certainly took note. Indeed, Druva CEO Jaspreet Singh offered congratulations -- and then shared his view on competitive differentiation.
Singh's statement about the deal reads like this:
"Data is moving to cloud, and needs to be protected and managed. N2WS was the pioneer in protecting cloud hosted apps, so we applaud Veeam for this acquisition. N2WS operated using AWS marketplace and fits the Veeam distributed model as well. Druva strongly believes in the market, but our position is that SaaS (as opposed to software) is a much cleaner approach to offering solutions in the cloud because it provides simplicity, better SLAs, cost predictability and a greater pace of innovation.
To keep in line with the SaaS vision, Druva announced Apollo earlier last year which has a bigger goal of offering visibility, management and orchestration all in a single solution delivered as a service through the Druva cloud platform. We're looking forward to competing with Veeam!"
Take a closer look at the statement, and Druva essentially is focused on SaaS while Veeam offers traditional software to its partners and customers. Druva sounds like an easier approach for modern cloud customers. But Veeam's approach also allows third-party partners to become full-blown CSPs on their own.
Data Protection: Key Rivals Emerge, Converge?
No doubt, multiple data protection showdowns are looming up in the cloud and down in the IT channel. In addition to Veeam and Druva, fast-growing players include Datto, Rubrik and StorageCraft are battling for position.
Consider these key moves and milestones:
- Veeam is nearing $1 billion in annual revenues amid an enterprise push while also maintaining a channel-centric focus on resellers and CSPs.
- Datto is digesting the Autotask merger and gearing up to show end-to-end MSP solutions at the DattoCon18 conference in May.
- Rubrik’s annual revenue run rate was approaching $100 million as of May 2017, at which time the company raised $180 million at a $1.3 billion valuation. Former Google Cloud Channel Chief Bertrand Yansouni recently joined the company for a partner push.
- StorageCraft is private equity owned and led by multiple SonicWall veterans who truly understand channel engagements.
Each company has different models to serve different segments of the data protection market. But they'll certainly compete as MSPs seek end-to-end data protection solutions for partners.
We'll be watching to see how Veeam leverages N2WS -- and how rivals march forward with their various partner programs as well.
