Veeam Cloud Connect Helps Belgium’s Largest Reseller Transition Customers to its Cloud for Backup and DR

Business Opportunity

Uptime Group was one of Veeam® Software’s first customers and resellers in Belgium. As a customer, Uptime Group uses Veeam Backup & Replication™ to protect thousands of internal virtual machines (VMs) and customers’ hosted VMs. As a reseller, Uptime Group recommends Veeam solutions for customers’ on-premises VMs, which number in the tens of thousands. Like its customers, Uptime Group has a multi-hypervisor infrastructure, and Veeam solutions support them.

“We became one of Veeam’s first customers because legacy backup couldn’t scale with our business growth,” said Erlend Schenkels, Managing Partner of Arxus, an Uptime Group company. “We had such a good experience with Veeam backing up our internal VMs that we made Veeam an integral part of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings for hosted customers. The obvious next step was to partner with Veeam as a reseller. We’re early adopters of cutting-edge technology, and Veeam is always ahead of the curve. Agentless, multi-hypervisor backup and changed block tracking are good examples. Veeam is the total solution for customers with on-premises VMs.”

Then Uptime Group found another way to build revenue with Veeam.

Challenge

Uptime Group’s reseller customers were perfect candidates for cloud-based backup and disaster recovery (DR) because many of them didn’t have second sites for backup copies and replicas. Moreover, they didn’t want to spend the time and money building and maintaining second sites. If Uptime Group could find a fast, easy way for customers to extend their on-premises VMs to Uptime Elastix, recurring revenue in the form of backup-as-a-service (BaaS) and disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) was just one step away.

Solution

Veeam Cloud Connect helps Uptime Group transition reseller customers to the cloud quickly and easily, making BaaS and DRaaS a profitable, recurring revenue stream. Uptime Group’s cloud business grows by more than 60% each year, and Veeam Cloud Connect contributes to approximately half that growth.

“Veeam Cloud Connect is practical for any customer environment, whether its one of our reseller customers or a prospective customer,” Schenkels said. “Demand for BaaS and DRaaS is high, Veeam is enterprise-ready, and we’re building revenue.”

Uptime Group has become an indispensable part of its customers’ business. Without Veeam-powered BaaS and DRaaS, customers run the risk of downtime and data loss.

“Most of our customers have an international presence and businesses that operate around the clock,” Schenkels explained. “They don’t have to worry about IT; they know we’ve got them covered. That’s really good job security for us.”

Solidariteit voor het Gezin (SVHG), a homecare provider, is a good example of a company that focuses on business rather than IT. Uptime Group hosts SVHG’s 100 VMs (20TB) and ensures critical systems are always available. If they’re not available, SVHG’s 6,000 employees can’t provide the level of care that 47,000 customers expect and deserve. If the company suffers long-term downtime and can’t deliver the right care at the right time, customers will find a new homecare provider.

Uptime Group delivers 24x7 Availability by using Veeam SureBackup® to verify the recoverability of SVHG’s backups and Instant VM Recovery® to restore VMs from backups in minutes.

“We concentrate on customer care and Uptime Group concentrates on IT,” said Olivier Vanderstricht, System Engineer at SVHG. Our reputation depends, in part, on Uptime Group. They’re an important part of our business.”

In addition to partnering with Veeam Software, Uptime Group partners with leading international hardware and software partners such as Cisco. In 2016 Uptime Group was named the Cisco EMEAR Commercial Partner of the Year. Uptime Group standardised its data centres on FlexPod, which includes Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS®) Cisco and NetApp E-series data storage.

“We recommend Cisco UCS FlexPod to our customers with on-premises VMs because we know from experience that Cisco’s blade systems are easy to scale and that centralised management saves time,” Schenkels said. “About half of our customers with on-premises VMs use FlexPod, and they use Veeam to back up, replicate and restore from NetApp snapshots, which is amazing integration.”

Uptime Group is a Microsoft partner too. Uptime Group’s parent company, Cronos Group, won 2016 Microsoft Country Partner of the Year for Belgium. In addition to selling Microsoft solutions to customers, Uptime Group uses Microsoft solutions in its own data centres, including Microsoft System Center. That’s why Uptime Group deployed Veeam Management Pack™ (MP) for System Center. Veeam MP extends System Center’s monitoring capabilities to virtual environments.

“Veeam MP provides metrics and insights into virtual environments that you might not see without it,” Schenkels said. “We get complete visibility of our virtual and physical environments in the System Center console, and we can see and fix issues before they impact our business. We tell customers using System Center about this level of visibility, making Veeam MP a great upsell.”

Uptime Group’s cloud customers have something else great to consider: hybrid cloud computing with Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Compute Engine, and IBM SoftLayer. Veeam Cloud Connect links to all of them.

“It’s a bright future ahead with Veeam,” Schenkels said. “In addition to offering 24x7 availability and business continuity to customers, we’ll roll out hybrid cloud opportunities with Veeam Cloud Connect.”

Benefits

• Helps grow cloud business by more than 30% each year
  Uptime Group met customer demand fast for BaaS and DRaaS with Veeam Cloud Connect. Veeam backs up and replicates at the VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor level; therefore, Uptime Group can offer BaaS and DRaaS to everyone, regardless of their storage, applications and operating systems. Revenue opportunities are endless.
• Delivers 24x7 Availability and complements Cisco and Microsoft solutions
  Veeam and Cisco UCS minimise downtime for Uptime Group’s customers, helping them adapt easily to business changes.
• Veeam MP for system Center
  Veeam MP for System Center gives Uptime customers real-time data and complete visibility of their virtual and physical infrastructures so they can proactively resolve issues before their businesses are affected.
• Aligns with cloud provider’s business model
  Veeam Software offers monthly rental and perpetual VCSP licenses so cloud providers can choose what works best in their business models. Most partners use rental licenses for the variable parts of their business and perpetual licenses for long-term contracts.