2017 was one of the best years in the history of Veeam, and 2018 is shaping up to be even better as we race to our first $1 billion year.
I am proud of the Veeam Team – all 3,000+ of our employees who stayed focused, kept believing, and most importantly, kept trusting.
Looking to the future, here are four trends that will shape this new year.
1. More Tech IPOs for the desperate and the needy:
There are an enormous number of VC-funded companies that desperately need to go public. These companies will go public not because their businesses are mature and healthy, but because there’s no other way to enable their VC investors to cash out. As a result, we’ll see the same poor performance from the year’s newly public tech companies that we’ve seen in 2017.
Veeam has had no VC injection, and our co-founders, Ratmir Timashev and Andrei Baronov, remain majority shareholders. Our strong financial health allows Veeam to make long-term business decisions that focus on the needs of our customers and provide assurances allowing companies to plan their future with confidence.
2. Virtually, every large enterprise will become a data company:
Every successful organization is rapidly becoming a data company at its core. Each customer, partner, employee and stakeholder expects a digital experience for nearly every aspect of their personal and professional lives. So even though a company’s revenue may derive from selling frozen french fries or refurbished seaside condos, the success of their business will increasingly depend on the quality of their information technology.
The velocity in which data is growing along with the flexibility organizations require to access, study and share data means they need to minimize their risk in data management – and they need a partner who is well placed to keep the risk of data loss to almost zero. Veeam understands the critical role we play in this data-driven future.
3. Large enterprises will not be ready to go “All in” to the cloud:
In fact, they won’t even come close. While boards and CEOs are pushing hard for a “cloud-first” strategy when it comes to IT investments, CIOs are not ready to put all their applications and data in the cloud. We will certainly see increased cloud adoption, moving from about 30% of applications and data in the cloud to just over half of applications residing there.
SMBs, on the other hand, are moving very aggressively to the cloud and will have the vast majority of their critical applications in the cloud by the end of 2018. This hybrid world of between cloud and on-premises for both enterprise and SMB is the new reality for IT departments. Companies, such as Veeam, who operate in both environments, will continue to find growth.
4. Data accountability will make avoiding outages and systems failures a top priority:
The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in the European Union and similar forthcoming regulations in other geographies will require organizations to disclose whenever there’s an outage or a breach. There have been requirements before, but nothing as strong as what we’ll see next year. Before, you were a good citizen for disclosure. Now, you’re a bad citizen if you don’t, with severe penalties for non-compliance. In the wake of the damage the Equifax and Yahoo breaches did to these companies’ brands, you can bet that CEOs will have outage, breach and systems failure prevention top of mind in 2018.
Trust and transparency will form the basis of partnerships between companies and the vendors they work with to protect their data. Data availability and accountability will be the responsibility of the entire eco-system of partners. Not just the company itself.
There you have it — my views on the business of technology for the next 12 months. I’d be keen to know your thoughts so feel free to leave your comments here. And, if we’re both right, we can celebrate in 2019!