We recently turned ten, and while some of our teams across the globe celebrated with cupcakes and balloons, others celebrated our company’s birthday during the grand opening of their new, official offices. In light of all these celebrations, I took some time to ponder my history at Veeam since I joined in December 2007 as employee number 8, outside of Russia.
Veeam has been fortunate to not only survive, but thrive, during one of the most turbulent and interesting periods in IT history. New technologies have emerged that have changed the way businesses think about IT, while ubiquitous connectivity has driven fundamental shifts in how we live and work. The company was founded when cloud was in its infancy and many businesses still relied on on-premises data storage and backup. While we’ve seen some incredible changes over the past ten years — both inside and outside the data center — the next ten years promise to deliver even more disruption and advancement to how we work (and play) — and the expectations customers place on businesses. Here are my top five predictions as we look forward to 2026:
-
- Cloud as the new normal: The expectation for both businesses and consumers is that data is available. Anywhere and at any time. The next generation of IT workers and consumers alike, are growing up in a world where 24/7 access to services isn’t just a matter of convenience, but a matter of fact. Veeam has always embraced a cloud-led approach and is scheduled to launch Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 (due out later this year) as its first foray into Availability for Software as a Service (SaaS). The growing popularity of SaaS will offer opportunities for providers of public cloud services to stay ahead of competitors and differentiate themselves by enabling customers to operate around the clock. Veeam’s focus has always been on embracing the channel and supporting Veeam Channel partners. The next ten years will see us working on ways to help companies embrace the public cloud while still working with our channel partners and our Veeam Cloud & Service Provider (VCSP) partners.
-
- Embracing a more comprehensive service offer: Thankfully, the days of just moving boxes and not adding value are over. Value-added resellers (VARs) need to embrace a service-oriented model for their customers, or else those same customers will migrate to other providers. Veeam is heavily focused on supporting VARs and has already released several products to help our VARs embrace and build robust, service-led business models off the back of our solutions.
-
- Subscription-based pricing as standard: As businesses move to a cloud-first operating model, the appeal of subscription-based pricing will become the norm. Veeam currently has no plans to drop per-socket, perpetual licensing for the Veeam Availability Suite, but new products will be subscription-based, with a focus on per-VM or per-workload pricing models. This is the model most software companies are using today and it has advantages for the customers, partners and Veeam. This transition will be gradual as many businesses are not yet ready to embrace a subscription model. But, over the next decade, subscription-based services will become commonplace.
-
- The adoption of multiple clouds: Just as companies today maintain multiple data centers for failover, backup, recovery and Availability purposes — and as businesses come to further embrace cloud-based services — a single cloud won’t be enough. Where the integrity of data and services to customers and partners are a priority, businesses providing services in 2026 will need to rely on a mix of on-premises, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and SaaS technologies to ensure data remains available. It’s inevitable that new technologies and processes will emerge to make it easier to maintain the same data across multiple clouds so that all your eggs aren’t in one basket, but ensuring they are all synchronized and available will remain critical.
- New ways to access data, and new reliance on it: The past ten years saw the emergence of both the smartphone and tablet markets as consumers have grown to embrace ubiquitous connectivity and an Always-On lifestyle. Similarly, the next decade will see further leaps in how we access data. The rise of artificial intelligence, speech recognition, digital assistants and virtual reality driven by enhanced processing capabilities will dramatically change how and when we consume data. The low cost of sensors and inexpensive network connectivity has seen the Internet of Things (IoT) gather momentum over the past two years and it will be exciting to see where this technology takes us. As we come to rely more heavily on automated processes — and are better equipped to make use of the data provided to us — the more critical it becomes that systems don’t go down.
The past decade has provided many leaps forward in how we work and access information. Gone are the days where consumers and businesses are willing to accept downtime for any service. While the next ten years will bring plenty of uncertainties, we can be assured of one thing: The importance of data Availability — anywhere, any time — will only grow.