News

Microsoft, Veeam Team Up for AI, Cloud Data Protection

• By David Ramel
• 03/07/2024

Veeam Software has entered an AI-centric partnership with Microsoft that sees the companies jointly developing new AI solutions around Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant and Veeam's new Data Cloud.

Veeam, a data protection and ransomware recovery specialist, just last week debuted its new Veeam Data Cloud, an Azure-based cloud-native data protection solution that provides Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure in two separate offerings.

Today (March 7) Veeam announced a strengthening of ties with Microsoft with a five-year strategic partnership "to innovate new solutions for protecting customers by integrating Veeam's product family and Microsoft Copilot and AI services."

Along with that innovation, the companies will team up to "bring to market" or "co-sell" the data protection capabilities of Veeam Data Cloud Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure.

Veeam summarized the multiple dimensions of the partnership in a news release, including:

• Joint development work to bring additional AI capabilities to Veeam backup and recovery products, including integrating Microsoft Copilot for automated data analysis, cost-effective insights powered by AI and easier data visualization.
• Integrated support of the latest APIs for Microsoft 365 Backup Storage to enable accelerated backup and restore speeds within Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365.
• Joint go-to-market activities to co-sell Veeam's protection and recovery capabilities for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure customers.
• Launch of new Veeam backup and recovery capabilities for Microsoft Azure.
• Accelerating on-premises customer migration to the Veeam Data Cloud hosted on Azure.
• Customer migration to and protection of Azure Kubernetes Services with Kasten by Veeam.

The company also listed its capabilities that help customers protect and recover Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure data:

• Securely protect critical Microsoft 365 apps and data from cyberthreats with access controlled, logically air-gapped, and immutable backups -- and assured, fast recovery every time.
• Restore anywhere, with the industry leader in rapid recoverability, and get business running 5x faster with advanced monitoring and reporting.
• Unified protection of Microsoft-hosted IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS data under a single, easy-to-use web console that scales to the largest enterprises.
• Speed time to value with instant readiness and intuitive, policy-based automation that starts protecting data in just minutes and provides over 50 recovery options.
• Lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) by storing compressed backups on cost-effective yet durable Azure Blob storage for cost optimization.

"As customers continue moving to the cloud and adopt generative AI capabilities, protecting their data remains our top priority," said Judson Althoff, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Microsoft, in the news release. "Together with Veeam, we are already helping millions of users fully protect their business data across Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure. I am pleased to build on our collaboration by combining Microsoft's copilot and Azure with Veeam's data protection solutions to help our customers back up, protect, and recover their data estate better and faster than ever before."