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>> We're back at the Aria in Las Vegas,
you're watching theCube's coverage
of VeemOn 2022 live in person.
but there's a big hybrid event going on,
close to 40,000 people watching online.
This is the CEO segment.
The newly minted CEO and Anand Eswaran is here.
And it's great to see you.
Thanks for coming on first time on theCUBE.
>> First time in theCUBE.
Excited to be here, newly minted,
those words I haven't heard those for a long time
but thank you for the warm introduction, Dave.
>> So why Veeam?
What did you see that attracted you to Veeam?
You have a great career, awesome resume, why Veeam?
>> A lot of different things.
It started with when I...
I spent a good bit of time.
I spent months with insight with Bill Largent
who is now the chair of the board.
And for me a few things,
one it started with the company culture.
I absolutely loved.
I spent time with our engineering team
that it's an innovation focused culture.
It's an engineering focused culture
which is so critical to any software company.
And so that was the first place.
And I spent a good bit of time with customers,
reading, research brilliant products.
Always innovating, even though it's a category
you would think is fairly mature.
I mean, when Veeam, for example, did instant recovery.
I mean, that was extreme innovation.
And so that was the first thing which was appealing.
The second thing was, yes, we've reached a billion,
but it still has that feel of a start,
But still has that feel of a Jeff Bezos says,
is best day one culture which is super critical
We scale but you don't want to lose your soul.
And what made you special in the first place.
And then you come down to the rest of the stuff,
it's an execution machine.
It's an absolutely interesting category,
especially in the world we live in right now.
You know the proliferation of bad actors,
security, backup recovery.
Everything you...
Ransomware is starting to become a meaningful threat
to every company.
So many different things coming together.
This category is an interesting place, but that's not all,
I feel that we are going to see this category evolve
and shape very differently.
You're going to see adjacencies coming
and you're going to see in a couple of years or three years
you're not going to just look at this and say,
hey, it's backup in recovery.
And so it's an opportunity to shape
what is going to be a very important inflection point
in this whole space.
So a whole bunch of things excited about it.
>> So flip question, why Anand?
What did insight see and the board see?
What do you see as your key skills that they wanted here?
Go after that opportunity.
>> You should also get insight on this man.
And you should ask them this question.
>> I know Peter shovel off.
>> Yeah.
I'll tell you where I think this relevant experience is.
If I look at the future of Veeam.
I think the first thing is we've got to think
through what the next evolution of Veeam is.
You know there's a ton of work to do,
even in the path we are on, on data protection.
And the team is absolutely brilliant at that.
But how do you start to think ahead?
How do you think about data management?
How do you think about where are the adjacencies
and how does it...
How do you shape and reshape the category?
And I have some experiences in that.
As I look at growth, Veeam must done a phenomenal job,
35,000 partners, an execution machine.
I mean, just last year we grew ARR 27%.
We are sustaining that growth.
But as I look ahead, there's huge opportunities
to further acerate our share in the enterprise.
To actually go work with creating multiple layers
of partnerships beyond the very successful partnerships
you already have.
How do you start to get GSI in the mix?
How do you start to get MSPs in the mix?
How do you start to actually get to being a core part
of the portfolio and platform of a primary storage partners,
HPE, Pure Storage and so on.
So reinvigorating and creating
a multidimensional partnership strategy is key as well.
And then just my experience in...
I ran the enterprise for Microsoft
and so those sort of experiences sort of are very relevant
to our next step of the journey as well.
And finally, I think the one thing
which matters most for me and yeah you realize.
Again I think we've forgotten
what it means to have a microphone on,
but culture.
I spent a lot of time in every company I've worked in,
in contributing to the culture of what shapes
and how do you create a purpose led company
and how do you get on that path.
Which is a very, very important conversation inside Veeam.
And we already do that.
You know there's a huge focus on purpose.
There's a huge focus on diversity.
There's a huge focus on inclusion,
but the cultural aspect of Veeam attracted me to it.
And I think my work and my passion
for attracted me Veeam as well.
So just a few of those things.
>> Yeah, you speak from the heart and you can sense that.
Dave and I were talking with Shmunis
about platform versus product.
Now you've got some experience with platforms,
obviously, Microsoft the amazing platform.
RingCentral, Shmunis brought up.
And then I brought up HP,
which actually never could figure out its software platform.
So you've seen some successes.
You've seen some couldn't never get there.
Do you see Veeam as a platform company?
>> You know the way I look at it is this.
I mean, I may actually not answer your question directly
but I'll answer the question.
>> Okay.
>> Which is, if you look at the biggest successes
in the industry, call it a Microsoft, Adobe, now Salesforce,
eventually the path from a high growth startup to scale
is platform and partners.
That is the key.
>> Ecosystem.
>> Yeah.
Platform and the ecosystem.
So it all comes together.
And so, yes, I mean, I think we already do that.
I mean, we have a singular platform today
for the multiple workloads we protect
from physical to cloud, to Kubernetes.
To the hybrid architectures.
The ability to actually restore your data into any cloud.
Back up from AWS restore into Azure,
or a physical data center.
So we already have a robust platform in place
but the scale or the growth from where we are a billion
to the next set of milestones two, three, five, 10
is going to be an absolute maturity in hand
of platform, partnerships, ecosystem.
>> That's a high wire act.
When you talk about platform and scaling.
You think about moving forward when you have pressure
to grow, often the easiest thing to grow is to acquire
and add adjacencies that might not be as core
to your core value proposition as they could be.
How do you navigate that as you move forward
in a world where...
Look Veeam was founded in an age
when it was all about meantime between failure,
recovery, time, objectives.
Now the big concern is malicious actors.
So Veeam has been able to navigate that transition-
>> Navigate that >> very well so far,
but how do you do that?
How do you balance that moving forward?
This idea of platform, is it desirous state to be in
but you don't want to be a fake platform
where you just glue a bunch of things on.
>> It all comes down to thinking through where we see
the world going from this point in time?
How do you see technology evolving?
How do you see the outside's influence is evolving?
And when I say influences, it's just a euphemism
for all the bad actors we expect to see,
getting even more active.
So the way I think about it is,
either platform or acquisitions are not things
you do piecemeal or point in time.
It all needs to accrue to a larger strategy
of how you create the ability for all of your customers
to own protect, secure their data
and eventually create intelligence from it.
So that they can actually be proactive about it.
If that's the thing,
our ambition is starting to become,
how do we sort of secure the world's data
and help companies create intelligence from it
so they can be proactive about it.
Everything else sort of accrues from there.
The platform we evolve from the platform we already have.
It stems from it.
The acquisitions we may do, will do evolves from it.
It all are...
Its pieces coming together to the overall puzzle framework
we've already created.
>> Yeah, I have so many questions for you.
And I want to get into a little bit of your philosophy,
but before we do it, I want touch on the TAM
a little bit more.
You mentioned in the analyst discussion this morning
that the market's fragmented.
A lot of people think, oh, back up storage,
we'll just put it together.
DelNow or EMC brought altogether
but they're just dramatically different markets.
You're seeing some of your competitors.
One in particular is now kind of pivoting to security.
It's an adjacency, but it's in I'm not sure you want to walk
into that mess, but it's clearly part
of a data protection strategy.
And you said, you want your, my words
legacy to be a significant increase in market share,
dominant position in the market.
Even if it's number two, whatever number one's nice, great
but much larger share than what is your 10%, 12% today.
How do you think about the TAM?
It's so undercounted, I think.
We used to look at Purpose Built Backup Appliance.
Oh, it's a couple billion dollar market
and it's a ceiling there.
It reminds me of service management with service now.
>> Yeah.
>> It's virtually unlimited TAM because it's data.
How do you look at the TAM?
>> How much time do you have?
I know .
>> Because I got so many questions
>> But I'll tell you this, right?
You got to piece this question very carefully
because I'll look at it in a variety of different ways.
Number one, if you do nothing, if you just do nothing.
I mean, today as I shared in IDCs latest report last week
we were joined number one.
For the first time we actually got-
>> Congratulations. >> Number one
>> That about milestone. >> That's huge.
That's exciting.
>> And that's revenue by the way.
That's not-
>> Yeah, that's in share.
But the thing is this, right?
If you look at share, we are at 12% as is the...
So 12% is not representative of how I think
about number one.
When you look at a market with a clear winner
you expect to see 40 to 60% market share.
So doing nothing is an opportunity
to actually continue the partner on we are on,
which is taking share from every one
of the top five, significantly
and growing as fast as we are.
I mean, we are going to be on a path
to doubling our market share in the next two to three years.
The share to gain doing nothing.
This is the first and the most simplest aspect of time.
Now layering other aspects of time
but just still stay in data protection.
Talk about every single SaaS workload coming on.
I mean, I shared 270 million teams users right now,
monthly actives.
The time if you were able to secure every one
of those teams users and protect the data,
I mean that's close to six to seven billion dollars.
It's not factored in into any of the time numbers
you see right now.
Gartner talked about 13, others talk about TAM being 40.
I mean, but SaaS workloads each of them are not factored
in as much as it could be right now.
So we are bringing in Salesforce, Microsoft 365,
we secure 11 million paid users with Microsoft 365 backup.
And so add all of them on execute.
We see a path through taking, share and getting
from here 12 to 25 to 40 and being an outsize number one.
And then you'd come down to what you said,
which is how do you think about adjacencies now?
What we, yeah.
Messaging is important, but unlike some of the competitors
we don't use words frivolously.
If we say something, if we say something,
data protection, modern data protection, ransomware attacks,
we mean it and there's product truth behind it.
We do not use frivolous security words
to create a message and get attention
and have no product crude behind it.
That's where we are.
We expect to see adjacencies come up.
We expect we to beyond execution
and bringing in MOAs workloads to look at the next layer
of data management.
We expect us to create partnerships
which allow us to go do that meaningfully.
And as time goes you should expect us
to be the prime influencer in reshaping this category
with other adjacencies coming in.
But we talk about it and this product drew behind it.
>> I wanted to get into your philosophy of management
a little bit.
I went to your LinkedIn recently
and I loved the little graphic that you had,
but I had a lot of people put up a picture of
a pretty lake or mountains.
I got theCUBE up there.
You had a number of items and wonder of I could read.
You had a rocketship, which was very cool.
You had teamwork, you had innovation.
I wrote down, ABC always be closing Alec Baldwin,
but everybody sells, I think is what it was
and then keep it simple.
>> Yep.
>> I really like that.
If they're going to evaluate Veeam they're going to go
to your LinkedIn page.
So tell us where that came from,
what your philosophy is as a manager?
>> Yeah, so this is a few things and this is the philosophies
which I put on, is a meld of what I believe in
and what Veeam believes in and has believed in
for a long time.
Which is life starts with a customer.
For us everything starts with a customer.
Even the product creation philosophy 15 years back was,
hey let's not just create some check marks
and create a feature because someone thought
it's an important check mark to have.
What is the value it creates for the customer?
And is it different enough, unique enough
where it actually creates a moment
where the customer sees a value impact their core business.
That's where it all starts for us at Veeam.
And then everything we do relates back to
is this moving the ball enough for our customers
and for our partners and for our developers and users.
Everything comes back to there.
Are we easy enough to do business with?
Are we keeping it simple?
Simple to use.
Our product should be really simple.
It should be brain dead simple.
Are our processes such that it's easy for us to connect
with our partners
Connect with our customers.
Connect with our users.
It all comes back to keeping it really simple.
And then I came down to a set of personal philosophies
which matters as well,
which is how do we make sure that...
We used to say everyone is in sales,
but we've got to evolve it.
Everyone is in customer success
because we all know that it's not just the first sale
which matters, which was two to 15 years back.
What matters today is yeah, the sale matters
everybody's there to sell.
But what matters even more
is the whole company rallies behind a customer's success
at every step along the way.
Because when you do that, you don't need to sell,
you get in through BBR and then we have a world of workloads
to actually create value for the customer with,
from Microsoft 365 backup
or soon to come Salesforce backup (indistinct).
We see that on net retention or...
And it's manifested in numbers, right?
It's manifested in growth.
It's manifested in net retention.
And it's manifested in NPS.
I mean, Dave, I'm hugely excited about that man.
NPS of 80 where we are.
I mean, you guys have been around for quite a bit.
I mean, that's huge numbers.
I mean, that's-
>> Apples in
>> Apple was 76
>> Yeah. >> or 77.
And so eventually that is what matters more for me
because it's share is important.
And I'm excited about IDC saying
your joint number one, hugely important.
But that is a consequence.
Growth is important.
25% ARR growth in Q1, super important
but that is a consequence.
What really matters is value for your customers.
And the number one metric I look at is NPS.
And NPS at 80, all the other things start to happen.
Pair it with the engineering culture
the innovation culture we have long roadmap ahead.
>> Veeam has made some...
What appear to be from the outside anyway,
pretty successful acquisitions.
Caston is an obvious one.
I remember it wasn't the first time I met Ray Meir.
It was maybe the third or fourth time.
We were at like a late night, Peter Bell party
this Highland capital at VMware.
And we were walking down Howard street.
I see Ray Meir and some of his colleagues,
we start chatting.
We got into a good conversation.
Like what about an IPO?
He goes, we're not doing an IPO.
We don't need to do an IPO.
And then several years later on theCUBE,
he's like, no, I'd be open to an IPO.
And then of course the big acquisition happened.
So you've got an opportunity here MNA obviously
is a possibility.
But what about the IPO in your future?
Presumably that's something insight wants to do.
What can you tell us about that?
>> No, it's a great question.
I was waiting when you were going to ask me that question
but this is what I would say.
Which is by the way we at today's numbers.
I mean, we shared numbers at the end of last year
1.1 billion in ARR, 1.2 in revenues, 99.99% organic, right?
Cost was the only acquisition we shared how...
Cost is a blip at this point in time.
And so the philosophy has always been organic.
And as I look ahead, this is how I think about it.
I think the pace of market change is going to be extreme.
And so we will be a lot more open-minded,
thinking about acquisitions for complimentary technologies
which allow us to expand them.
And think about adjacencies more to come there.
IPO, see the good thing is this,
a lot of companies want to enter the public markets
to raise money, create liquidity.
That's not the primary lens for us.
And so the good news is that we are incredibly profitable.
We shared 30% EBITDA for 2021.
So money is not the issue,
but we do think that we entering the public markets
is a good thing for a variety of other reasons,
because when you are public
and it comes with the transparency,
which we believe you're already transparent,
but it puts the focus on you.
And that creates even better growth (indistinct).
Especially as you go work with large enterprise customers
there are a lot more amenable and so we feel that
it's a strategy of growth not a strategy of liquidity
for us, but stay tuned.
You know I fully expect for something like that
to happen sometime towards the middle of next year,
to the end of next yeah.
>> I mean, had a similar conversation with Frank Luman
they obviously were able to raise money,
but wow what a change since the Snowflake IPO
in terms-
>> Yap. >> Of just the brand value.
And I again, so many questions
I thought your Keynote was great by the way.
>> Thank you.
>> I'd love the focus on ransomware, of course.
I thought the bot jokes were great.
Keep them coming.
I mean, I really did lightens things up.
So thanks so much for coming on theCUBE,
really appreciate your time.
>> Absolutely appreciate it, Dave and Dave
by the way, I mean, it's funny.
I mean, Dave and Dave
Dave and David reminded me
of Thompson and Thompson guess which comic book
they're from?
>> Thompson and Thompson,
>> Thompson, I don't know.
>> I don't Know.
>> Tinton.
So you got to go read up.
You guys don't look anything like that,
but David and Dave was an absolute pleasure.
My first, theCUBE and look forward to many more to coming.
>> Love to have you back.
All right, thank you for watching.
Keep it right there, theCUBE coverage of VeeamOn 2022,
two days of wall to wall coverage here
at the Aria in Las Vegas, we'll be right back.
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