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Leveling Up with Veeam: Rick Vanover on Community, Cloud, and the Future of Data Protection
21 Plays2 months ago
Hosts: Tom May & Jonah May
Guest: Rick Vanover, Senior Director of Product Strategy at Veeam
Episode Overview
In this episode of Rebel Devs, Tom and Jonah sit down with none other than Rick Vanover—“Rickatron”—from Veeam. Fresh off VeeamON, Rick shares behind-the-scenes insights about how the event comes together, what’s next in the Veeam Data Cloud journey, and why the Veeam community continues to be one of the company’s strongest differentiators.
This conversation blends industry perspective, personal anecdotes, and technical deep dives—from new Linux-based appliances to the challenges of balancing partner needs, all the way to reflections on careers, risk-taking, and the evolving tech landscape.
What You’ll Hear in This Episode
- Life after VeeamON: Rick’s whirlwind schedule of VeeamON, RSA, Nutanix .NEXT, and why a "VeeamON-off" vacation was overdue.
- The Veeam Community: How Vanguard, Legends, and user groups shape the company’s DNA and directly influence product strategy.
- Event Takeaways:
Linux-based Veeam Backup & Replication appliance – and why it blew the audience away.
The rise of Veeam Data Cloud and its impact on service providers and customers.
The balancing act between C-suite priorities, MSP needs, and partner representation at VeeamON. - Business & Tech Evolution: From capitalization vs. OpEx in cloud economics, to why community programs like Vanguard deliver real ROI.
- Careers & Risk: Rick’s reflections on being risk-averse in data protection, watching his son hack Chromebooks, and how unpredictable paths shape our roles in tech.
- Technology Everywhere: Construction, data centers, and even HVAC systems—how “non-traditional tech” jobs are becoming highly technical and critical.
Key Quotes
- “At VeeamON, the goal is simple: everybody levels up. That’s what makes the event so special.” – Rick Vanover
- “Fly with eagles, you rise. Soar with ducks, you sink. The Veeam community is full of eagles.” – Tom May
- “Most customers can cover 90% of their needs with Veeam Data Cloud. The beauty is in the choice.” – Rick Vanover
Why Listen?
Whether you’re a Veeam user, MSP, or IT pro, this episode gives you a rare mix of technical insights, business realities, and community wisdom. If you want to understand where backup, data protection, and cloud services are heading—and how to align yourself with that future—this conversation is a must-listen.
Connect with Us
- Rebel Devs: rebeldevs.com
- Different Dev: differentdev.com
- CyberFortress: cyberfortress.com
👉 Subscribe, share, and join the rebellion. The Rebel Devs Podcast challenges conventional thinking in tech—and you’re invited to be part of the conversation.
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Transcript
Introduction: Challenging Tech Norms
00:00:17
Speaker
Rebel Devs podcast show that challenges conventional thinking in the tech industry. Each episode features conversations with solutions who have taken unconventional approaches to problem solving, pushing the boundaries of what's possible in their respective fields.
00:00:38
Speaker
Join the devolution. Hey, RebelDev
Hosts' Backgrounds: Tom and Jonah
00:00:41
Speaker
listeners. This is Tom May coming at you at some point. You don't know when because we record this when you don't know and we release this when we decide. So, you know, there we are. Typical people.
00:00:50
Speaker
Today, as always, have Jonah, my partner in crime. And Jonah, you and I are just coming off of Iman. Are you recovered yet or what? I am mostly were recovered, I would say. I mean, I'm in the massive slew of home projects again, you know, redecorating the house, getting it ready before a crawfish boil this weekend for Mother's Day slash my birthday.
00:01:13
Speaker
I had a friend of mine that used to say that's not allowed in i IT. IT is going to meetings all day during your job and then your real IT job starts after hours. So you may not be a real IT t person by that test, just to let you know. But
Balancing IT and Personal Life
00:01:25
Speaker
did I see that you dropped a new blog post out there about something in the home lab? oh but Actually, two posts. ah One's going to get promoted on social media right after this recording, because, you know, yesterday was the write-up finally finishing out. What did I do in the home lab and smart home in 2024? And, you know, now we're almost halfway through 2025. And I did a bunch in February and March. So had to sum up some of that. And then I've got to dive into some other topics. Just start churning through the blog backlog now that I'm through BMOM.
00:01:54
Speaker
Very cool. Well, I'm going
Rick Vanover's Insights
00:01:55
Speaker
to transition to our guests, but before we do, you know, I know you struggle to put out more blogs ah blog posts and whatnot. I'm really bad on my blogs, but ah talking about the Veeam community and Rick's going to be introduced here in a moment, like guys like Chris Childerhouse and Nico Stein and those guys, they, and Shane, man, they are like blogging machines. So now that I've totally given credit to community, let's have the guy that heads it all, Rickatron, Rick Vanover from Veeam, sir.
00:02:22
Speaker
Welcome to our program. Hey, thanks to be ah back on again. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Jonah. um Yeah, those those a few, as well as both of you and and so many more, really make the Mean community special. I was just talking in the pregame. I don't know how you guys do it all. I truly don't.
00:02:42
Speaker
I think it's fun. I think if we could all find a way to get paid to do what we do, it'd be awesome. But then it kind of negates the whole community thing. Then we're like sleeper agents. So no, absolutely. And you, sir, we were talking about came off of Veeamon. Jonah and I had some downtime, but you've been a traveling fool, if you will, like living out of a suitcase, man.
00:03:04
Speaker
Yeah. So, you know, Veeamon is Veeam's biggest moment of the year. And we put a lot of work into it. I have a kind of a unique additional honor burden that I put along with it.
00:03:17
Speaker
I was using air quotes ah for the podcast listeners in the sense of honor burden. It's an extra assignment. So I have a unique perspective. I'm part of the content team that helps form the experience. I try to be the voice of reason.
00:03:32
Speaker
You know, there's a lot of marketing people, lot of people who don't use our products, right? And so there's just right there. Do you use Veeam products? Yes or no will tell you a lot about how relevant you can make a content experience. Okay, so I'm on that team. Yes, I try to bring ah the voice of reason. And I think we do operate a successful Veeamon franchise because it feeds around the world.
00:03:55
Speaker
But a lot of times people are asking me, it's like, you know, ah but how is this V-Mon compared to others? you know Which one's your favorite?
Networking at Veeamon
00:04:03
Speaker
And it's like it's like asking the person who does the dishes at a restaurant what to order on the menu. Do not ask me because I have a very, very different perspective on things. But you're right, Tom. I'm right off of V-Mon and then No joke, I was here at the office on Thursday right after doing stuff and then at it again Friday, and then I was off to RSA conference. Oh, it's squeezing a customer meeting on the way ah to RSAC in California.
00:04:34
Speaker
And then I was just yesterday back from Nutanix.next, and I'm actually tomorrow starting what I'm calling V-Moth, which is my little bit of vacation that I need a break. But I am running low on the tank for sure.
00:04:49
Speaker
Well, my Veeamon experience is so much different than others. This year was completely different for me, and I'll touch that. But my experience with Veeamon was being in the community, being a Vanguard, kind of getting those previews, knowing what's going on. So if you're not in the program, get in there. It has many great features.
00:05:03
Speaker
But I would go to Veeamon, and I would sit with the CEO. I would sit with the marketing director. I'd sit with the sales director. I'd be there as CIO back in the day when I was with Global Data Vault.
00:05:14
Speaker
And they would be like, this is the most amazing announcement. And I would literally be there and be like, What did you hear? What do you think that meant? Right. And they would say something offshoot and we would have to translate out.
00:05:26
Speaker
That's how cool it was moving into more of a CEO role. I'm like, well, I'm technical. I get what they're saying and that's pretty cool. But this year was awesome for me because of Southwest Airlines.
00:05:36
Speaker
I got delayed in the airport in San Diego. I kid you not. I think I got there at like 11. We didn't fly out to like 8 p.m. And I was like, good Lord. And we were taking a little mini vacation to Vegas.
00:05:48
Speaker
I was like, let's lay over in Vegas and have just a great weekend. We'll go out Thursday, detune our Veeam off, if you will. Well, I ended up tripping across all these people that were coming off of Veeam on as customers.
00:06:00
Speaker
And I spoke to two or three. And honestly, i was curious because... I asked them how they and what they thought about Viman. You know, was it your first? Was it your eighth? And they're like, no, it was my first. And I was interested because for me, kind of like the older ones a little bit more. Not that the newer ones aren't good, but I'm thinking it's more because it was a different experience because it was like number one, number three, right?
00:06:22
Speaker
These people were just stoked, man. They were like, oh, this was so amazing. There was this and that. I can't believe we got into a partner breakout session and there's the C-suite and this, da, da, da, da.
00:06:32
Speaker
And they're like, it was just so amazing. And then there was one that was really interesting, which I thought was, I talked to them. They've been to every single Veeam on ever. And I was like, wow. And I was like, who are you? And I'm not going disclose, close their name. and they're just like, I don't know, man. I think that Veeam is a little out of touch with um making it back to the MSP level. And I'm like, well, have you talked to this person? Have you talked to a Rick Johnson? Have you this, that?
00:06:56
Speaker
And like, well, yeah, kind of. And they kind of get it, but it's not translating in our business. I said, well I got nothing to do. You're not in my market. I've been there. And we worked through a couple of things in the airport there. And they're like making phone calls back to the office. I'm like, did you know that we can do this, this, and this weekend that, that, that.
00:07:11
Speaker
And it was like, they heard the concepts, but they never had like the rubber meets the road sort of thing. And I was like, well, that was interesting. They, they, they almost were missing that business layer, which is what I thought was being way more addressed in these couple of years. So I'm like stumped, man, when I'm like, I don't know where we're going with things as a V mon culture.
00:07:33
Speaker
And I was just shocked. I was like, it really did hit the mark. So great, great job with it. I mean, yeah was be Yeah, and you got to bring everybody up.
Unique Features of Veeamon
00:07:42
Speaker
That's the thing. That's the goal that I take is everybody's going to come up a level. It's a level up endeavor.
00:07:48
Speaker
That's the goal of going to VMAW. And this year was one big difference. and And this was probably a miss, but also there's a whole different conversation about being next to the holiday, but we didn't have the VMCE program.
00:08:01
Speaker
in-person instruction the day but or the weekend before, but that wouldn't have worked so close to the holidays. So that was one just side note on level up because sometimes it literally is truly leveling up and and being ready to take the exam.
00:08:16
Speaker
ah Super good feedback. And, you know, it's it's really tricky because the C-suite, they set out some priorities. we got We got to hit on this. We got to hit on this. got to hit on this. But also we can't underrepresent that. We can't forget about that. And, you know, we've made commitments to that, too. So it's like it's it's the world's trickiest puzzle to get the balance right.
00:08:37
Speaker
And one thing we struggle a lot with is we have two days to work with. You know, and you think about I tell this to people all the time ah ah above and beyond Veeamon. I say all we have is our time and our attention.
00:08:51
Speaker
And if I'm going to come to Vimon for two full days, you know, I got to come out on Monday and I got to leave on Thursday. That's a lot. That's a commit. You know, even if you're, ah you know, in Texas to California, not too bad. Or Ohio, we had people from um the Middle East make the trip. We people from all regions around the world, ah you know, Europe, South America, they all made the trip.
00:09:15
Speaker
And a lot of organizations have different objectives on what they want to get out of it. And so i think in the end, everybody levels up, but you know it's really tough to dial up exactly what that persona needs, especially when you start segmenting into partners. you know i'll I'll be the first to say, partnerships are in Veeam's DNA, period.
00:09:38
Speaker
And whether it's a service provider partner, we have some opportunities with managed service providers, which is a little bit different than a cloud service provider, right? And and we've we're working on that and there's a team being formed to grow on that.
00:09:51
Speaker
And another name would be Vito, if you had Vito. Vito's in that realm. And then there's also, you know, resellers and GSIs and there's distributors and there's alliances and there's professional services. And I'm probably forgetting one, you know, so all of them kind of need different things. And when you think about that partner breakout, I hope that they were correctly represented across the different.
00:10:18
Speaker
I don't want to say swim lanes, but the another thing that's interesting about Veeam is I think I named five or six different kind of big types of partners. Yeah. It's not unlikely or it's not uncommon for an organization to identify to one, two, or maybe even three of those categories.
00:10:34
Speaker
Right. So and oh there's also education partners now. I forgot about that one. So there's seven, you know, so it's not uncommon for some to i multi-identify. Right. So it's it's it's quite the puzzle for sure.
00:10:46
Speaker
Interesting. My favorite part of it was people were calling us the Veeam family. So you had Jonah out there. You had Tom out there. People know us a little bit more. Then my wife, Jess, is out there and she's a VMCE now. She went through the whole ah Women in Tech or Women in Green, whatever that program was, and inserted on up and through and now she's starting to do some more community stuff in there then we bump into an internal beamer randy weiss and he's like hey guys that's my nephew that's my great nephew that's my you know and it was like wow and everybody was like you guys are like a family around this and we're like veemus just really worked for us i know it sounds weird like a family and it was kind of cool walking around veemon having people shout out about that and we're like wow look at that we have like our own little so my my dna comment isn't too far off
00:11:30
Speaker
Yeah, well, when my wife worked at Southwest Airlines back in the day, there was actually a wall that honored like family that worked in the company like multi-generational. They were like, oh, these are people that have grown. We're a family, but look, we're really.
00:11:42
Speaker
And like what Jim did, Desco's daughter a few years ago came to work in and I was at an event with her out in San Diego. and was so cool seeing her command that room and whatnot. And I mean, Jim, I call the fortune cookie of wisdom. Like I love his LinkedIn. It's like he's the most inspirational dude ever.
00:11:58
Speaker
Um, it must be cool to have him internally to you all for those things. So, um, Yeah, I love Jimmy T. He reads a lot, shares a lot. he and He does this video thing internally called Ask the Coach.
00:12:11
Speaker
And he's pulls it. I've been on and so many other great folks at Veeam have been on and like a bi-directional wisdom share. and And one thing I admire about Jim is that he can walk into any scenario and
Future Tech Trends and Texas Hubs
00:12:24
Speaker
bring value.
00:12:25
Speaker
And ah in perspective and such. And, you know, what's what's also incredibly interesting is he started his journey at me and he joined in October of 2014, right before the very first V-Mont. Like literally that was week one or two.
00:12:39
Speaker
And ah he had a mission to lead our sales for the U.S. or I should say the Americas. And then as we, you know, anybody who's been in sales um with ah with a, with a hyper growth company, you, you change your territories, your assignments, your mappings, you you, you know, those types of things. And he moved into what we call our global customer success, which he's got global responsibility for the existing customer base.
00:13:05
Speaker
And it's kind of funny because, oh You know, we've got scenarios. There's one individual who's no longer with me, but he was like truly one of the first 10 or 15 people.
00:13:17
Speaker
ah When he started, he handled all sales west of the Mississippi. He lived in the Los Angeles area. And by the time he left, he only handled commercial customers on the northwest side of Los Angeles County.
00:13:35
Speaker
It just condensed down like wild. I'm sure that's scary as a sales guy too, because when they do that to you, right, what do they do? They increase that quota still, if you will. so Well, but it's funny because i I know plenty of people that they never leave the DFW Metroplex for, you know, like better account rules and stuff, you know. So some territories always have enough client base.
00:13:58
Speaker
So that's that's also, you know, 2007, 8, 9, Veeam was a very different Veeam of 2025. I mean, I moved to Texas in 07 and I was looking at work and I was like, there's oil and gas, there's tech, there's this. And I'm coming from New York, which is like the world. But it's right before that big crash out. Like I saw the signs coming, we moved.
00:14:18
Speaker
And then I was talking to Jason Buffington online. I think like three or four months ago. And he was like, you know, we've targeted where we believe that tech triangle right there, Dallas, Houston, Austin, just that area is going to become the next Silicon Valley. So many companies are moving to Texas in those areas and research and development. You know, we have a space city popping up and all these other companies just coming in.
00:14:43
Speaker
And I was like, dumb luck on my side, but I'm curious what Texas will look like in 20 years in our neck of the woods because it will change so much. So it's... Will you see that in a lot of places across the U.S.? I mean, um I live in central Ohio and we launched AWS US East 2 here. But then now I turn around and Google and then there's a Facebook data center and then Intel's building that manufacturing facility here.
00:15:10
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And there's Veeam. You know, it's like there's so many things going on here. And then... I've heard you know similar stories across different parts of the country. i It is wild. i wonder, I need to go get an analyst number. What's the whole you know TAM of technology? you
Entering and Evolving in Tech Careers
00:15:30
Speaker
know And if you think about when you start including consumer tech and things like that,
00:15:34
Speaker
It's wild how um how integrated it can be in the cloud. and ah In fact, just over the way here, I'm looking out my window, they're building a data center. I don't know who it is. It's not hyperscaler data center, but it's a data center. and I'm really curious who it's going to be when it's done. But um it's just funny when you see these things become next door. In fact, every time I land at the airport, if we're landing from the that one direction, you fly right over this fab from Intel.
00:16:02
Speaker
that is being built. It's massive. I've never seen a construction something that big. You know, it's just when you see those types of infrastructure things happening, i mean, the technologist in all of us has to really, really just think that's really cool.
00:16:17
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And it it is even so. I was talking to a friend of mine who has nothing to do with technology. and At one point she was like, well, I really want to get into technology. How would you suggest? And I was like, man, you know, 10 years ago, I could be like, find a certification, go and learn whatever. you technology is so broad there's like true tech there's like auxiliary tech as i'll call it that you're in a supporting role but you're still teched out really it's like how do you gauge somebody and you almost have to do like in high school remember they used to do those what are you going to be when you grow up sort of things and they're like tom sorry you're a garbage man and you're like man this sucks and some guys like i'm a professor well you know what both of those exist in tech all day long
00:16:57
Speaker
Um, my younger son went into the national guard and he ended up in the Corps of engineers and he was going to be like a dirt mover. Right. And I was like, man, you know, that's interesting because, you know, you're going to learn how to run that heavy equipment and whatnot. And my buddy, he's been on the podcast.
00:17:13
Speaker
is a senior superintendent for Turner Construction. They're like the biggest construction firm in the U.S. And so, you know, he's he's done like TCU Stadium. He's done skyscrapers. He's done a lot of data center work. And he said, you know, in construction, we're even getting to, oh, you want this project? Well, you want this guy because their claim to fame is building a data center. He said, believe it or not, even in construction, there are dirt movers that are out.
00:17:36
Speaker
actually like your data center guys because they know how to level and build that foundation right for a data center versus a school versus and construction are starting to make like uh tiger teams of tech guys public buildings and things and i was like who would have ever thought that a guy running a dozer would be tied so heavily to technology it's crazy Yeah, it's funny you say that. So long story, but um just, ah you know, it was a a family friend and I was talking to them and i had met their kid and, you just it was maybe ah or five year old kid, you know, young, young boy, ah incredible imagination. And, you know, the conversation came, what do you want to be when you grow up?
00:18:24
Speaker
And the kid said, I want to be a construction worker. and And the mom almost felt a little bit embarrassed. Like, you know, like I want you to be a doctor, a lawyer or engineer or something. And i when I, she didn't say anything, but I went in and I said, you know, the construction worker of the future is going to be so critical, highly technical.
00:18:44
Speaker
It's like trying to work on your car nowadays. You know, it's, I can't do it anymore. You know, it's too technical. So you're not wrong, Tom. Well, I laugh when I went to high school and you know, the last millennia that makes me feel so old. So I love joking saying it.
00:18:58
Speaker
I remember we were like, we're going to go work in technology and make all this money and blah, blah, blah. And all the dumb kids got sent to like O-Tech and they were like, we'll teach you how to sheet rock and whatever. I go back from my high school reunion, too many years to tell.
00:19:11
Speaker
And like the dumb kids, they're like, I own four businesses. I'm a deck of millionaire. I'm a whatever. And I'm just like, I've done well in technology, but, you know, it's crazy because every day, like in Texas, do you think the most important person in this world is not the guy that fixes your air conditioning?
00:19:29
Speaker
They'll all day long. like And they're super tech too, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, but it was almost the same thing when I was going through high school. I mean, you remember... You know, I was in some of the advanced, you know, AP and IB classes and and some of it was scheduling, but they had the offsite career and technical education academy for the high schools in our district. And I could not get into the computer networking classes, the aerospace classes, is the robotics classes I was trying to get into where I would have walked out with like CCNAs and and other things like that. And what were they doing? They were sending the people in like the remedial math classes to all of that and the auto body shop and the, you know, go learn to be a hairstylist and walk out with your license to go work at a somewhere with that.
00:20:14
Speaker
And, you know, if you weren't in those advanced classes, you could get in the CTE classes all day long. It was frustrating because I remember fighting with the administration with Jonah because I literally said, does he need Shakespeare four?
00:20:27
Speaker
Does he need Spanish five? If he can walk out with his A plus cert and a CCNA, he's walking into a job all day long. And it was sad. And I remember talking to assistant super of technology and this person was like, wait, we dumped millions of dollars into this program. The guidance counselors are doing what?
00:20:46
Speaker
And so they were supposed to go back and try to rectify where Why not incorporate that into these advanced degrees? Because in Texas, we we have the IB degree. So it's a higher level, very specialized thing. But yeah, it's a crazy world we live in. So I don't know. And what do I have to show for it? I walked out with like 66 or 69 credits, but only actually like 20 of them were applicable to a computer science degree.
00:21:11
Speaker
I hear that. I mean, when I went to school, there weren't really students. curriculums I ended up with a business degree because my only other option was computer science. And I really didn't want to program anything. But my buddies and I were on um old web crawler and, you know, IRC and things like that over like 2400 baud modems growing up around IBM. And, you know, we're finding all these little just pop up little networking closets here, there and everywhere, creating the local Internet and stuff. You couldn't walk into school and do that at all. So.
00:21:44
Speaker
I'm glad at least there's more of that out there, but I don't know. We can switch back to Veeam, I guess, but that's what the listeners like. They never know what they're going to get here. So. Yeah, well, it's it about being a risk taker. I'm not a risk taker. I'm not, I'd never go start a business, you know?
00:21:58
Speaker
So you think about those, some of those folks that, you know, did good or whatever. That's not me. I'm never going to go start a business. I just not a risk taker, which is actually also amazing given that I'm in the data protection business, which is I don't want to take risks with data, right? Yeah.
00:22:14
Speaker
And then you just have to be self-aware. But then I look at my kid, right, which is kind of dangerous because he wants to work at Veeam and he knows how to use Veeam. And he is 11 and he is building computers. And, you know, I'll hear, hey, dad, do you need this old laptop? I said, no.
00:22:31
Speaker
And a half hour later, I said, hey, dad, I made it a Chromebook, you know, and stuff like that. So like and now great little milestone there. But I'm like, dude, OK, don't just go grabbing computers and making them Chromebooks. I mean, I'm backing everything up.
00:22:43
Speaker
But I don't want to be undoing all these things. But, you know, and I think that's cool. But there's no way i would give myself 0% F minus, minus, minus on predicting what Rick Vanover at age 17, 18 would be.
00:22:59
Speaker
to where he is now, though I'm happy with where I am, but I had no clue. And it had nothing to do with the technological technology ology revolution, because I'd say students today are AI is that one.
00:23:11
Speaker
And there will be others that come into play that change the game. So it's like, you just got to be willing to, you know, respond to the conditions as they happen. So never look back.
00:23:23
Speaker
It's okay. My dad always used to say, ask everybody what their degree is in and you'll find more often than not, they do nothing to do with their degree. It's always some other sideline. He was like, have a marketing degree. I worked on a project to bring Bud Light as a marketing campaign out of our college thesis.
00:23:40
Speaker
And he's like, I have no Bud Light money. But he was like, I own. He was like, I started a car lot. I started a repair shop. I had a body shop. I got into real estate. I had all these different things.
00:23:50
Speaker
And the only thing that like how I got involved was as a kid, he was like, what are these computers? They could probably do something around here. My kid better know. But while you're talking about your son, the other guy on this podcast was the bing of my existence as a kid.
00:24:05
Speaker
he would hack and rip through stuff in innocence. Like, hey, dad, I figured out that I can't get on the internet because there's no default gateway. And it's like, well, son, that was on purpose. But now it's like, great, now I got to do this. So, you know, people used to question what I would do with technology with Jonah growing up. And I was like, you know what?
00:24:24
Speaker
Still be outdoors. He was a scouter. He was outdoor. He played some sports and stuff, but it was like healthy tech was good. And now I'm proud of it because I'm like, he's his own man. He's out there. He's being Vanguard. He's a VMCEA, you know, 25 years old, heading up some product at Cyber Fortress.
00:24:40
Speaker
I'm like, man, that's pretty cool. You know, like maybe that was a thing. And I think he's happy. I don't know. Maybe he wants to go be one of the construction guys on some days. Who knows? Youngest Vanguard ever.
00:24:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:55
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely question what if I went and did construction? You know, I like to tinker on my house. I like to tinker on my car. You know, I was out till like two in the morning last night trying to get a couple things working with Forescan because of some issues I have from upgrading the radio years back so I could have a CarPlay in my truck because it was a year too old to have CarPlay stock.
00:25:15
Speaker
And, you know, I like to do it, but I think if I had to do it for a living, i would be very frustrated and stressed out by it and not want to do it. you know It's nice to not have to work on a deadline or churn things in and out constantly with those things and just go at my own pace.
00:25:31
Speaker
What do they say? The shoemaker's children have no shoes. That's a saying for a reason, but I'm going to jump into all things Veeam and I will just share some of my highlights. I won't dive into them. You guys can comment on there, but being a Linux guy.
00:25:45
Speaker
Oh yeah. Like I was all about that and watching the demos of the actual ISOs hit and the multi-rolls and how to install it. I was just geeked all day long.
00:25:58
Speaker
And I'm sitting in that session and it was still kind of marketing-y. Like it was kind of like, we're releasing it. So you're like, am I going to see Under the Hood? Let me tell you, those guys knocked it out of the park. They still dove in there hard.
00:26:09
Speaker
I was so impressed because I thought, oh, I'm just going to get this product delineation. And some of the people in the room wanted to get rid of their Windows licensing. I get it. I know the power of Linux. I love it.
00:26:21
Speaker
And I was just like, oh, this is so bad, man. This is just amazing. And you know hearing questions out there, will there be an upgrade path? Well, it's not yet, but there will be. And then there'll be this and like you know hypothetically 13.1 maybe. And you're just like...
00:26:35
Speaker
Oh, now I want 13 ones. Like we're not even out at 13 and jaw. And, uh, guys, I think that was the most awesome sauce I saw. Like the other stuff was cool, but I was like, Oh my God, there's actually an interface. You can boot right off of the ISO to do things.
00:26:50
Speaker
Holy crap. The OS craps out. They've built it into the ISO to be able to fix it. Holy crap. Veeam dies for some reason. Oh, you can recover that back. Oh, you're retaining your data. And I'm like, Oh, oh, this is so amazing all day long because coming from the cloud world, we've all lived in the Veeam world where it was like, you can fix everything locally.
00:27:12
Speaker
And then if it if it doesn't work, just redo it and it would break the chain to the cloud and you have retention and space. And they were like, no, no, no, no. You can just rebuild on the data stays. And I'm like, holy crap, the level that went into this was by far the coolest thing. I cannot wait to go out. Like Linux properties were cool.
00:27:31
Speaker
I love hardened repositories. I use them. I'm like, oh,
Linux Solutions at Veeam
00:27:34
Speaker
this is like, I'm already like, wait, we can bring redundant beam servers in and run them on Linux and lower my customers costs. And like, I've even gone back to my customers just to share with it.
00:27:44
Speaker
And for me, it's increased revenue and professional services, but it's altruistic i don't have to walk in and be like just buy something expanded i can be like this is really cost savings it's redundancy it's healthier it's more powerful it has all of these things that you need do this and long-term tco is going down so knocked it out of the park with that rick like that whole thing loved it all day yeah i love it it's by far been uh the most fan favorite type of preview announcement that we have from the from the event stack.
00:28:21
Speaker
And just to kind of tell everyone where that is. What is this? Well, especially Veeam backup and replication. And we for now, let's just omit the orchestrator and Veeam one products. But there will be a time that they roll into this too.
00:28:37
Speaker
okay But in the let's just say in the next three, six plus months, it will be just BNR, proxies and repositories too. ah What is this? Well, what we what we showed was what we're calling a Veeam software appliance.
00:28:52
Speaker
And we would distribute an ISO that would install Veeam backup and replication on a hardened, purpose-built appliance. Now it is Rocky Linux and it is pre-configured. There is one option.
00:29:06
Speaker
Install or to or repair, maybe exit. And then what product do you want? BNR or proxy or repository? That's it. And then boom, you have a Veeam.
00:29:18
Speaker
That's it. That's all there is to it. Now, what's interesting about this is that it is this, that what kind of made this really attractive to us is that the the same code base that exists in Windows, the.NET framework can be recompiled on Linux. And that has been a super big gateway for us.
00:29:40
Speaker
Now, a lot of QA, make no mistake to get there. But this will be Veeam backup and replication, not running on Windows, but deployed as a appliance in a either a virtual machine,
00:29:53
Speaker
So that ISO can boot and configure upon a virtual machine, or it can be on bare metal. And we already have the Veeam Ready Server qualification published with five platforms in it.
00:30:05
Speaker
And then going forward, I think it's reasonable to expect some of our storage partners are going to grab onto this and go. So I'm say, yeah. Oh, yeah. yeah Yeah, I think you guys already have one of them announced.
00:30:18
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Linux will be good for us from a licensing perspective. And, you know, as a Linux guru, I like it. But really what we're more excited for is probably the high availability.
00:30:29
Speaker
You know, as a service provider where we potentially have hundreds of customers writing Cloud Connect backup or Cloud Connect replication to that one BBR server. You know, in a world where we're looking to move to S3 compatible storage for the backend, where we're looking at things like high availability vCenters and potentially vVol, and then we're already using Cloud Connect gateway pools and looking at Postgres with high availability to replace Microsoft SQL Server clusters, it means we can essentially start patching our systems without with very little, if not zero downtime to our customers going forward, which has always been a major thorn in our side.
00:31:10
Speaker
I've actually talked to three different service providers, cloud service providers that actually inked deals to move to the Veeam data cloud. And I know in the beginning that was kind of contentious for some folks, but um it's interesting. Apparently
Cloud Adoption and Strategy
00:31:25
Speaker
whatever happened at Veeam on, I got hit through, I do some consulting.
00:31:28
Speaker
Some of our advertising is on Fiverr and Upwork and stuff. And I actually had a brand new silver partner that came about and they're like, can you give us this overview of how to build our business, if you will?
00:31:40
Speaker
And I was like, yeah absolutely. So I'm really excited that I get to be like, this is how we used to build it. And feel free to do this with all this CapEx and all this other nonsense or being data cloud.
00:31:51
Speaker
If I'm starting it today in 2025, I'm all in there right now. And knowing that, let's say it has some, you know, it's missing some feature in there right now compared to a traditional installation.
00:32:04
Speaker
There's ways to other overcome it through other partners and whatnot. Like there's add-on portals you can do through the Veeam network. There's other automation testing you can do through there. But more and more gets wrapped into Veeam data cloud. If you're building your business today on it,
00:32:19
Speaker
You don't have to hire everybody like we did. There's a reason why ah Jonah and I got so much into Veeam APIs and whatnot. It's because we had build custom portals. And we worked with Vitaly back in the day to help bring about the Veeam service provider console because that wasn't a thing. and And the claim to fame I love is when you query the API and you get CPU and RAM and disk allocations, we fought for that because we had to show Veeam, if I'm building all of these customer sites,
00:32:46
Speaker
I have to now go through and configure all the VMs to spec. If I could pull it through API, it's real time in my configuration database. I can now build the customer to the same specs and go and Veeam's been going and going and going. Well, imagine a world with VDC where you're up there and guess what? Now it's in there automatically the feature request hits and you get that hide knowledge boom everybody gets the feature benefit right there and you're not going well crap how do i change my api what do i do to hook to my configuration database i mean the worst thing in the world was the day when beam would announce a new version but it was the best day ever because you got new toys unfortunately i like to joke with they just didn't have batteries to run them it was like the world's worst gift
00:33:29
Speaker
Yeah. What 20 PowerShell commandlets changed in Veeam version 11 that we have to fix for so our portal will work with the new release before we can give the customers the green light to upgrade? Because I still kind of live in that world. It's getting better. we're We're working internally to start moving over to service provider console. We're having discussions around things like Veeam data cloud because just the operational costs of data centers, infrastructure, you know, hypervisor licensing, especially with all this Broadcom stuff going on.
00:33:59
Speaker
and all of the labor, even just to support the infrastructure and to keep the portals up to date before you even get into any of the billing, the sales, the support teams. You know, Veeam Data Cloud, especially for service providers, really not that much more expensive than just the BB365 licensing. So when you factor in all those other things, it's almost cheaper or the same to just have Veeam run it. And, you know, for probably 90% of your customers, that's your cookie cutter offering that it'll serve all the needs they want. And if they want something more specialized beyond that, that's when you can talk about bringing it in-house or hosting it yourself in the public cloud.
00:34:35
Speaker
Yeah. And it's interesting. We had Will Basich on an earlier episode. was my former ah partner with Global Data Vault and he's a CFO by trade. And so he works for with Fortium Partners, which is fractional CFOs.
00:34:51
Speaker
And, you know, we were talking through some things and it reminded me of, you know, a lot of times you build a technology business and the smart ones look at this evil word called EBITDA. And it's all about your valuation and multiplier.
00:35:02
Speaker
And I think that's the only hiccup I could see in this world. And it has nothing to do with the better tech. It's if I capitalize an investment, it looks like one way on a balance sheet.
00:35:15
Speaker
But if I op exit, it looks a different way and it affects my EBITDA severely. And so i can't imagine Veeam finding a way to change that because it's still an op.
00:35:27
Speaker
But I would think with, as we were talking about technology changing things, man, I will bet you money that accounting rules will change at some point. Because I know one that we found back in the day was if I put development efforts in through consulting to bring a product to market, I could write that as a capital expense. And I'm not an accountant, don't just do this stuff. But Basically, we could capitalize that and wrap it because it's a development to a product. And it went from an operational payroll expense into a cap and it shifted the balance sheet all day long. So I'm thinking more of that's going to go out there um as we see that.
00:36:06
Speaker
um I mean, Rick, what's your thoughts on this? You're on the pulse of VDC. You're on the stage. I mean, what's going on there that was cool and wild up there? Because I saw you click click next thing up some cool stuff up there.
00:36:18
Speaker
Yeah, so ah well on that financial topic, one comment I'll say there is that it does matter. i I do think there is a slight preference to the OPEX model from a financial allocation standpoint.
00:36:34
Speaker
And with this like idea that you turn it off and walk away. Okay, now I'll be the first to say these things are sticky because you can't turn off basically part of your compliance strategy of protecting data.
00:36:48
Speaker
Okay. So there's, yes, it's categorized a certain way, but it carries kind of a perpetual business value. So just caution on some of these financial gains. um Veeam Data Cloud, it is by far the most strategic thing we've undertaken here at Veeam since I've been here, which is, this is my fifteenth year.
00:37:11
Speaker
And I'll be honest with you, I'm blown away by what they're doing. And, you know, for those who had a chance to watch the ah keynotes or attend, we showed the new One UI where the Entran Salesforce product exists. And it's reasonable to expect the M365 product will be ported in there too. That is the direction.
00:37:33
Speaker
It's just there's a big market share of the ah deployed M365. on the the current iteration, which was actually born on, built on what we acquired in 2023.
00:37:46
Speaker
So and it's grown. The Veeam touch is real. to it overnight ten x It's 10x. It's wild. But anyways, what I see going on is this very attractive, very interesting phenomena where the Veeam data platform set of products, like the stuff that Anton makes,
00:38:04
Speaker
is then taken in, you know, still installed, configured, managed on one zone. Like the Veeam software appliance, that's going to happen. But then those products delivered in Veeam Data Cloud.
00:38:20
Speaker
That is really attractive. Customers
AI Integration and Growth
00:38:22
Speaker
have the choice. You know, to Jonah's point, I think most customers can cover a lot of ground with Veeam Data Cloud. Sure, some people are going to be anti-hosted and such. No problem. We got an answer there.
00:38:37
Speaker
I love this choose-your-own-adventure and then manage service providers, cloud service providers as well, with door number three of a bunch of value-add angles.
00:38:50
Speaker
But the the magic is going to be the backup storage vault. You know, it's the, my boss, Dave likes to call it. It's the Veeam data fabric and these AI capabilities. Now I'm going a little bit into the future. I'm so stoked about some of those things.
00:39:06
Speaker
And there's a lot of work. There's a lot of controls. There's a lot of security, compliance, governance conversations that like I remember ah someone from Europe said, very cool, but, but, and but, and but they went on all of their concerns and, and they're not wrong.
00:39:24
Speaker
yeah that It was, we have some, ah some things to put around it. So I think it's really and exciting time in a sense of what we have coming is the most perpetual product output I personally have ever seen on the beam product team.
00:39:41
Speaker
And I keep thinking, well, how big can this get? Well, we're we're going to get bigger. It's going to get bigger soon. I'll just say it that way. I don't know, man. I look, believe it or not, this is crazy. I own a company. I have employees.
00:39:55
Speaker
And I look at the job postings at theme all the time. And every now and then I'm just like, what cool crap is working over there? And then this like sweetheart, like job pops up and I'm just like,
00:40:07
Speaker
oh, that might be some fun stuff to work on. them i Can I keep the company? Can I just like go over there and I'm moonlight here? Like, what does that look like? Because there's just so many things out there you look at and you're like, God, it'd be fun to be part of the mothership. I'd lose community standing and whatnot. And, you know, Joe and I have talked about this over the years. It's just like, Man, look at this one thing over there they're doing. That's so cool. Could you imagine working on that team with the money, theme development, the talent, the everything, and you're on an outside, like we're in the ecosystem, but we're like,
00:40:40
Speaker
ah could be so wicked, man. So I, believe it or not, love the theme job postings. I almost wonder sometimes kinds it's ah kind of how like, you know, where we're going to invade somewhere in the world is if you look at the government contracts and if you see contracts pop up for a certain country, you're like, we're doing something over there because they're looking for contractors to do this.
00:40:59
Speaker
Right. So shadow roadmap. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I'm giving away my signature. Okay. Jonah, what sort of stuff did I share? Linux being my biggie.
00:41:10
Speaker
ah What were some of the things you saw out there that you loved at VMI? So, yeah, I mean, like I said, my availability is going to be great as a service provider, you know, and I'd say probably my number two up there was, you know, the whole starting in Q3, new SaaS products will have day one service provider support in DDC just because new products and new functionalities have kind of almost been the bane of my existence. You know, go going back to your duality of love-hate relationship of a new release, it's like, oh, here's version 10. It has CDP.
00:41:41
Speaker
only if you want to do it locally. You got to wait till version 11 or really version 12 when it's mature to do it as a service provider, you know, and look at us two or even three years later now, you know, still no Salesforce self-hosted capabilities as a service provider, at least at scale with things like multi-tenancy and integration into our own portals. So to see like, ah you know,
00:42:05
Speaker
Mind you, i have no idea what's on the roadmap. I'm just pointing this out of my rear end when I say this product so no one get any ideas. But, you know, hypothetically, if a Google Workspace backup were to launch in Q3 or Q4, you know, as a service provider, I wouldn't have to wait till, you know, V3 or v four later to be able to properly offer that. I could just sign them up with Beam Data Cloud and start selling that day one.
00:42:25
Speaker
Have the full multi-tenancy capabilities that I need. Yeah, two or three years ago, you guys were at Veeamon. You were presenting. ah You had a booth, I had a booth, and I looked across the way and you guys were announcing Salesforce backups. And I remember a lot of the other presenters were like, how the hell did they do that? That's not even like something that Veeam can do with a cloud provider.
00:42:44
Speaker
And some of the other vanguards were like, yeah, well, I'm sure Jonah figured something with that. You think he'd tell us? And yeah, he did. But it's interesting to see that that not being thing. And I know it's not a high, I mean, I don't get a lot of phone calls from people.
00:42:57
Speaker
um When Veeam does send us business through the VASP, I think one time I had a Salesforce call come in and Jonah, I had asked you because you did some of the work behind. And I went to the meeting and I was just like, I hate joining a sales call where you want expertise.
00:43:12
Speaker
And I literally walk out call and I'm like, please don't pay for expertise. You could do this yourself. Even just in this one hour meeting, I can show you what you'll do. Like, yes, I'll take your money.
00:43:23
Speaker
And that leads me to believe something that I'm starting to realize about Veeam as well as um I see there's TAMs out there now. There's more pro services and I'm on the vast side. So like, wait, our bread and butter is pro services.
00:43:35
Speaker
And I talked to this guy who had a really interesting analogy for me. And I don't know that the partners have really picked up on it, but it's pretty revolutionized. He was like, have you ever gone and tried to start a real at scale Microsoft 365 project?
00:43:49
Speaker
And it can be overwhelming for the best engineer in the world. But Microsoft is like, buy it from us or here's our partners that will give you the same Microsoft, but they've done it so many times. You're getting that expertise there and to the point where they're doing the implement, but they're staying around for the administration and the health checking.
00:44:08
Speaker
And this person told me it's a fast. They were like, you probably should start adopting that network. You go to the VDC, you go to the whatever. And you're like, yeah, you don't need me But I have that business world experience. I have that.
00:44:21
Speaker
I've been through the product iterations. I have the connections over there to be there. And it's just kind of that shift of your business. And then I remember going back. I think the book was from good to great.
00:44:31
Speaker
And they talked about different companies. And I remember the failures in there. You know, we go back and we're like, why is Kodak not in business when they own the original patents for digital photography?
Adapting to Market Changes
00:44:42
Speaker
And there's story after story about businesses just not evolving and Veeam evolves. And if we're hitching our stars to Veeam, which on this podcast we have, it's looking at it and going, well, if they're moving in that direction, how do I align with them to not just support, but go back to see that advantage, if you will.
00:45:03
Speaker
As an early cloud service provider, people ask, well, how did you grow at Platinum? How did you sell it? How did you whatever? And It sounds stupid to say, but sometimes I'm like, you know, it's kind of like dumb luck sometimes.
00:45:15
Speaker
I know we did a lot of right things. We did some wrong things, but like a lot of it was right place, right time, relational. How do you recreate that now that you're worried about the Veeam data cloud, but how can you have that same mindset to go, what's the good?
00:45:28
Speaker
Where can I align and where can I grow with Veeam? Because to what Rick, you said, you know, Veeam, it's in your DNA about partner and relationships. So why would that change? It's just... You've seen something shift in the market.
00:45:41
Speaker
We should shift with. so Well, you've got to take an advantage when you can't. And what I mean by that is the Veeam data cloud, the as-a-service, will be ah big disruption. of It's already started, honestly, really, the latter part of last decade through now.
00:46:03
Speaker
And, you know, maybe Salesforce was ahead of all that time. And look where they are now, yeah. But um I talk to people who are looking at Veeam stuff one way or Veeam stuff through Veeam data cloud. And out I say, look,
00:46:18
Speaker
Let me tell you about two things you won't have to do. You won't have to do patching and updates. So there's I think it's reasonable to say that could be two to three hours of change controls a month. I'm just making up a number.
00:46:34
Speaker
So that's hard time back to you as an organization. And the other thing I say about consuming these Beam protection as a service is, and by the way, a service provider can do that same outcome and the same for this next one too.
00:46:51
Speaker
The other big benefit is you customer do not have to be an expert in sizing stuff in the cloud. That's hard to do, to get right.
00:47:02
Speaker
for Feeds and feeds and over provisioning. And if you wanna do, especially something like Microsoft 365, if you want to do that on you know best, it's probably best in Azure.
00:47:16
Speaker
And then you're paying for that and you wanna use it efficiently. like Here's just a little point I'll share. Internally, we have a bunch of proxies that do the work for Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365. They design these proxies to be, this was ah this is an old number, I don't know if it's still the case, but they design and target them to be perpetually 98% 100% busy.
00:47:41
Speaker
because that means they're 98 to 100% cost-effective. Otherwise they're not. So think about that. I was wondering the development cycles. um Veeam decides to do Veeam data cloud. They do n three six five offering. They pop it all out.
00:47:56
Speaker
Then shortly after, if my timeline's remembering it correctly, We start seeing the shift in V8 and we start seeing proxy pools and all these other things. It's almost as if Mothership took this product, said, we need to scale this wide.
00:48:11
Speaker
oh wait, we're seeing these limitations that their service providers had. Boom, they launch and overcome. And then they're like, now let's gift that back into this other arena, if you
Veeam Community Benefits
00:48:21
Speaker
will. So suddenly you're starting see product development change.
00:48:25
Speaker
become more in line because now beam as a service provider not the appropriate term but that's maybe why we're seeing that ripple across into same day releases and you know i'm not expecting any of the secret sauce from you rick but uh i don't know it well i have access to it but i i try to stay away from too much of the details i i think plausible deniability is uh is good sometimes oh yeah Yeah, and I have some theories, but I'm not going to go wildly speculate on a podcast where who makes sense.
00:48:56
Speaker
Well, save that for the bar. Yeah. yeah Well, we're coming down to kind of our last 10 minutes here because we try not to trap people too long. Rick, it's been a great conversation.
00:49:07
Speaker
um I kind of want to give everybody final thoughts here. Anything in the world. i don't care if it's in the news today. I don't care if it's Leemon, whatever, like thoughts and ponderings or comments of anything we've spoken about or something we've missed.
00:49:21
Speaker
So ah shameless plugs as well. But Rick, you don't need a shameless plug. You're Rick. You're Veen. You're here. You're the guy. We all... um'm sorry I'm just going to, my final thought is going to end where I started.
00:49:34
Speaker
I just want to say a big thanks to both of you and some of the rock stars in the Veeam community. That is a unique differentiator that Veeam has in the market. And we owe a big thanks to that. That's the only club.
00:49:47
Speaker
I want to drop. So just a big thank you to the community. Well, that community thanks you too. I mean, I know myself helped getting out to Veeam on this year as part of the community. Like I was like, where are we going to go on out? Hey, we have some slots boom out there.
00:50:00
Speaker
What vendor does that for you? Right. And then of course the V100 summit. I mean, I tell everybody all the time, like it's double H sword, man. Like you're encouraging people to apply, but you're like, oh I'm bringing in more competition.
00:50:11
Speaker
um But we always put that out there because it's such an amazing product. program like just not even the presentations we get a little bit of the secret sauce but just even meeting fellow powered vme users who i can just pick up the phone and like we had nico stein on ah couple months ago or so and he was like yeah that whole crowd strike thing he was talking about changing the bootloader menus to put you know the different uh boot medias in there i was like holy crap man like that's genius
00:50:42
Speaker
it's so blatantly obvious to you, but you don't think to do it. And it was like, he just off the cuffs makes the comment one day. That's what the community has been for me is just a passing comment. and you're like, my gosh, you know, meeting Jim Jones in the bar while i'm literally speaking to one of my clients that's a cloud provider. Jim stops, talks to me, we're sharing stuff and whatever.
00:51:04
Speaker
And I'll share this one, former Vanguard, ah Greg Tulum, right? He and I are on a sales call one day with one of my clients and we're talking about this stuff. And there's about 10 different people from this client on the call.
00:51:18
Speaker
And one guy goes, holy crap, we're like talking to like two Veeam gurus here. They were like, the price of admission just for this meeting was over the top. And I'm like, we're just like going on all because it was hilarious. Somebody found a statement about Sober on Greg's Cloud IVR's website that it wasn't compatible.
00:51:37
Speaker
And so he's explaining why. And I'm like, well, point of order, because we set the jobs up. like this. It was so wickedly cool. And these guys were just, we're just hashing it out and and they're loving in it. And I realized, you know, someone told me when you fly with eagles, you raise up to their level. When you soar with ducks, you sink and you're soaring with the eagles and the community program. It's just excellence over there, Rick. You guys do a great job with it.
00:52:00
Speaker
That's cool. That's great to hear. it Like those stories of, yeah in fact, we, ah was it at Vmon? Yeah, I think it was Vmon one year. We had couple folks, Matt c Crape, Jim, maybe one or two others talk about how it's impacted their career journey.
00:52:17
Speaker
And like, hey, that was not the, I'm not in the business of changing people's lives, but I i do want to like just make something good, but, you know, improving their life, that's different.
00:52:28
Speaker
Whoa, that's heavy. Oh, yeah. And ah all right, Jonat, it's time for your thoughts. Blot us away. That's a word. Yeah, I mean, i I said it before with Maddie and Safi on the call, and I still stand by it. I wouldn't be where I am today without the Beam community and the Vanguard program, you know.
00:52:45
Speaker
It was like drinking from a fire hose even more so than just going to a service provider and learning IT and Beam drinking from a fire hose. And... Yeah, it's astonishing the knowledgeable people you're around, you know, especially at some of these summits. Like I remember previous years, you know, I'd be out at a bar and it it would be like, oh, look, there's Danny Allen, you know, one of the C-levels, then C-levels at Beam. And now he's all over doing all this cool AI stuff for developers at Sneaker, however it's pronounced.
00:53:17
Speaker
Well, I look at the Vanguard program. It's funny. One day my boss called in me in and he was like, you should be a Vanguard. And I was like, whatever, dude, what what is this? I don't even know what this is. And this was years ago.
00:53:27
Speaker
was like, whatever. And I heard a little bit about it. And I was like, put Jonah in that program. Like, go try to rally the troops to go. So Jonah goes off and comes back with all this cool crap and whatever. And then I was like, well, Stephen knew he's...
00:53:40
Speaker
We've raised him up to these things. you know I like to joke I knew Steven when he was our level one support guy. And you know I always believed as a C-level raising up your team. So i was like, let's get Steven in there. Well, we sell the business. And I'm like, well, this sucks. They're both in the program.
00:53:55
Speaker
I don't know if I was worthy, but I was so envious of it. Not because of the title, but what they were coming back with. And I was like, any company worth their salt should be trying to get their people into the community because it will pay dividends. It's like back in the day, I fought in the service provider world to say, not only do I want to get so much off of my Veeam points by my size, I demand Veeam training.
00:54:22
Speaker
And I fought and fought and fought. And they're like, oh, that costs money. That costs money. And the first year they gave it to us, we saw revenue jump like 60%. And we traced it back to, knowledgeable engineers being able to go, oh, you should do something. And I laughed because sales was all about M365 when it dropped out.
00:54:40
Speaker
It was the point where they're like, I don't want to talk to you, sales guy. They would call our support desk and try to get someone like Jonah on the phone or somebody else and be like, all right, sales guy, talk to me. What's the skinny? Is this crap or should we do it? And they'd be no, all day long. You should be doing it for these reasons. This is how it works.
00:54:55
Speaker
They go back to sales. Sales was thinking they're getting these huge wins because they're great marketing. It was really the knowledge. And then going into the community, it's crazy because I've talked to vanguards that had to have gone at their own where their companies don't support them. And I'm like, do they not know the value you bring back in this?
00:55:14
Speaker
It's just, it's the best thing you can do. when what what do What do you drop them in November, Rick-ish? very We take ah take nominations for vanguards towards the end of a calendar year.
00:55:25
Speaker
Legends are ramped up twice a year based on the community hub activity. ah There's also above and beyond user group leaders, which are just around the world in their own markets. And then there's even the Rising Star program, which is a kind of subjective opportunistic thing. And the takeaway from that is there's many modes into the Veeam 100, right?
00:55:49
Speaker
And it's just, I'm almost embarrassed to hear that this the good stuff about it. But no, fantastic perspective. And, you know, we we generally want to find the folks where they are.
00:56:00
Speaker
Well, I like to shout out the legends. I'm not a legend. I'm a Vanguard. And I think those legends, God's honest truths, are the hardest working people in showbiz. They put out so much. Like we get on here, we're user group leaders. Jordan and i help with the hackathons on automation desks. Like we do these community things.
00:56:17
Speaker
To me, those things are fun. Those legends, I mean, they're hammering away at the keyboard, posting, posting, posting. They're reading, they're consuming, they're growing. I'm like, those guys work. They're butts off. So dude, shout them out.
00:56:29
Speaker
Oh, dude, yeah we have data on this. Yes, they're super visible, but we have data that <unk>m I'm not really at liberty to say here, but for a B2B benchmark, they, we are off the charts in what they call peer to peer answers, like answers not given by an employee to questions and things like that.
00:56:50
Speaker
That is real I mean, that's saving support cases. And then there's an average cost to a support case. This this community is doing good things. And I'm so lucky with those folks and and so many more that we didn't mention.
00:57:03
Speaker
Awesome. Well, I think that was a great way to wrap it. Rickatron, thank you for being here today. Pleasure having you. Look forward to having you back again. And Jonah, Cyber Fortress, go check him out. If you need some cloud work, that's your guy. Hit bounce. M365, maybe some Beam Data Cloud later this year.
00:57:23
Speaker
ah Different dev, you know what? We can get you up and running. Boring. But we like doing it. What do we like? Regular involvement. We love audits. We love being that third set of eyes, if you will, looking over your Veeam environment, documenting it, helping fight those evil cyber insurance carriers and those things. So check us all out. Read the show notes and tune in next time.
00:57:47
Speaker
or just starting out, the Rebel Devs podcast is a must listen. So join us. Comment, share, and subscribe. Be part of the Rebel Devs.