Many eyes in the technology world are on Veeam’s Premier Data Center Availability Event, VeeamON 2014, taking place in Las Vegas, Nevada this week.
October 6, the first day of the conference, was dedicated to partners, and I’d say it was deeply nerdy and user-friendly at the same time. Personally, the energetic atmosphere was very different from other conferences I’ve ever attended. And the information was definitely interesting.
Making a long story short, there were three key takeaways from Day 1 I wanted to share with you today:
- Veeam’s next generation of data center availability—Veeam Availability Suite v8
- Veeam User Group opened to partners and end-users
- Lab WARZ
VeeamON 2014: Partner Keynote
Always-on Business and Veeam Availability Suite v8
As I’ve already written above, today had a marked focus on the Partners. In general, Veeam partners of all types are here and we had partner enablement tracks.
VeeamON 2014 kicked off with the Partner Keynote about the Veeam present top partner opportunities. Despite the early start (8:30 a.m.), the conference hall was full. Veeam CEO and President Ratmir Timashev said a BIG Thank You to all Veeam Partners for joining the event this year, made a short introduction to the Veeam history and joked that “The best product never wins.” The main idea of this part was that we live in an always-on world. The modern business cycle no longer fits in the traditional 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. work day. Today people need an Always-On Business, and Veeam helps to enable it.
Dave Russell, a Vice President and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner provided some interesting results of Gartner’s research and showed that by 2014, 30% of companies will change the backup vendors due to frustration over cost, complexity and capacity.
Veeam principals from the partner point of view were formulated as “Easy, Engaging, Predictable and Profitable.” Attendees also learned about many interesting facts related to Veeam today, for example:
- 1,500 employees
- 3,000 new customers each month
- 100% channel engaged
- 6,5 million VMs protected
- Fortune 500 customers – 470, and more
I also attended several breakout sessions dedicated to various topics starting from Backup Cloud Connect to PowerShell and RESTful API. Veeam Availability Suite v8 and Veeam Backup & Replication v8 will be out in their final form this fall, although some early adopters were already able to get a look at the new features through a BETA during the summer.
If you’re interested, sessions will be available on demand a little bit later – we will let you know via email and social media.
Veeam User Group
It’s true that Las Vegas is a party city, but the Veeam User Group meeting is serious tech business (and maybe just a little bit of fun). We were honored to meet Scott Lillis (Senior Director of North American System Engineers) who kicked off the meeting at 10:45 a.m. It was good to see the large crowd engaged in asking questions during the event: MSP guest processing, dedupe appliances, vCenter replication and migration, failover and failback, PowerShell and more.
The Veeam User Group meeting was filled with informative technical presentations, conversations, networking with peers, and so much more. If you’re interested in becoming a Veeam User Group member, you just need to sign up here (and it’s free).
Lab WARZ
More than 250 registrants applied for the Lab WARZ competition to test themselves against the brightest Veeam engineers around the world. From 11 a.m. till the late evening, the Lab WARZ center was occupied by IT pros. Some of the attendees preferred to book the workstation for Tuesday, so I’m looking forward to the next two days of the conference to finally know the name of the Best Veeam Engineer for 2014. The first place grand prize of $10,000 is quite enough to make you feel special in Las Vegas (even if some people say you can never bring too much money to this city.)
VeeamON 2014: Lab WARZ
Last, but not least… Reminders
Just a couple of quick reminders for folks:
If you’re among the 1,300+ lucky attendees of VeeamON 2014 this year, don’t forget to install the VeeamON 2014 mobile app to keep connected with your peers while you’re at the event and get involved in conversations. It’s available for iPhone and Android mobile devices:
There is also the browser version for Windows phones.
Using this app can help you:
- Build your personal agenda.
- Subscribe for real-time updates from your peers, experts, bloggers and other VeeamON 2014 attendees.
- Share your thoughts and feelings on the conference directly in the event’s newsfeed.
If you couldn’t join us this year personally, connect with Veeam on Twitter and Facebook to hear what’s happening during the event. Use the official hashtag #VeeamON to view the latest conversations.
We will share more news on VeeamON 2014 with the Day 2 Recap, so stay tuned!