Remember New Year’s Eve this past December? We were all about to ring in a new year, and a new decade, with the hope and aspirations a new year brings. Barely six weeks into the year, the entire planet became gripped with the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The virus has become the prevalent focus of concern for governments across the world, all putting aside other policies and differences to battle the situation and protect communities. It’s in times like these that we see the resilience of people coming together to fight a common enemy; we have seen unity and camaraderie in all walks of life as peoples’ health and safety must be put ahead of anything else.
This is true for all businesses too. Over the past few weeks, everyone at Veeam has been monitoring updates from global health organizations about the COVID-19 pandemic. We have always put the Veeam community first and foremost in everything that we do, and in the current environment, it has never been more important.
We have taken various measures to ensure the safety and well-being of our employees. A month ago, we closed every Veeam office and asked employees to work from home. Veeam has always embraced remote-working, but we have instructed everyone to do this now to ensure their safety. Since starting this new work-from-home policy, we have seen increased creativity as teams now look to engage with each other in different ways; I am amazed at how many virtual “coffee talks,” “lunches” and end-of-the-week “happy hour” video calls are happening. This sense of pulling-together and collaboration is fantastic to witness.
We have also ensured that the superior service our customers and partners have come to expect from Veeam continues during this period, as without them — and you — Veeam does not exist. Veeam has always maintained stringent business continuity standards, and we are striving to provide the same levels of exemplary service despite the challenges facing us. Our community is everything. Our community is also the reason we decided to make our flagship conference, VeeamON, a virtual event in 2020. I am personally excited about this event as it will deliver the same energy and rich user experience of the physical event, but in a way that will ensure our community stays safe. More on this to come.
As many organizations struggle to deal with the new rigors of remote-working and the associated challenge of protecting critical data which now resides on personal PCs, we have free solutions that can help. Both Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows and Veeam Agent for Linux still have FREE editions available. These powerful tools back up laptops, PCs or Windows tablets at home — which, at the moment, a lot of businesses are struggling to do as they attempt to implement remote data protection strategies. If you have several systems at home, download Veeam Community Edition which has central management and support for other types of workloads (again, FREE!). You can also back up server operating systems as well. I hope these solutions provide you with a strong starting point to help protect your critical data.
The pandemic has taken its toll on so many countries and people across the world but has also brought out the best of us in so many ways. Veeam is here to assist you, and your safety and well-being is our paramount concern. Stay safe, stay healthy, and do your part in social distancing — we are all in this together and we will conquer this together.