HPE Buying Veeam? (Rumor or Speculation, For Now)

HP Enterprise is interested in buying Veeam, the fast-growing provider of business continuity and backup software for VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V environments, according to The Register.

As of January 2017, Veeam had roughly 230,000 customers and 45,000 partners worldwide. Moreover, the company experienced 28 percent year-over-year growth growth in 2016 and $607.4 million in total revenue bookings, fueled by accelerated enterprise and cloud revenues.

Among Veeam's big priorities for 2017: Expanding its partner program to reward partners in specific market segments -- enterprise, midmarket and small business, etc. At the same time, the company can't afford to take its eyes off the SMB sector, where a range of data protection rivals (Acronis, Datto, StorageCraft, etc.) are growing rapidly and building deep relationships with MSPs and CSPs worldwide.

We expect to hear more about the company's overall partner and customer strategy during the Veeam On 2017 conference, set for May.

HPE Buying Veeam: Rumor, Speculation or Fact?

Now, back to the question of the day: Is HPE truly pursuing a Veeam buyout? The Register didn't offer too many details on that front. Both vendors declined to comment on the speculation, and ChannelE2E doesn't have any direct knowledge of talks between the company.

Still, HPE CEO Meg Whitman has been on a buying spree of late. The data center infrastructure provider recently acquired Nimble Storage (All Flash Array) and SimpliVity. And Veeam certainly fits the profile of Whitman's targets: Fast-growing businesses that are tuck-ins rather than complex merger targets.

Those synergies aside, we'd consider the HPE-Veeam chatter "speculation" rather than confirmed fact...