Veeam + Kasten

Veeam-Kasten External FAQ

• What is Veeam announcing?

  Veeam announced that it has acquired Kasten, a market leader in Kubernetes Backup and Disaster Recovery, in a cash and stock transaction valued at $150M. This brings two industry leaders together and allows Veeam to serve the growing need for Kubernetes application backup and mobility for IT and Cloud Operations teams across the globe.

• Why did Veeam acquire Kasten?

  As cloud‑native adoption and usage continues to explode, Kubernetes‑native backup is one of the most critical needs. Kasten is an industry recognized leader in addressing this need with market leading technology and marquee customers across the world.

  This acquisition cements the strategic partnership we previously announced between Veeam and Kasten in May 2020, and has since been very well received by customers, partners, and analysts.

  This builds on Veeam’s leadership in data management spanning cloud and on‑premises and now adds modern container workloads based on Kubernetes.

• Why is Veeam making this acquisition now?

  Kubernetes is quickly becoming the foundation for all applications, no matter where they might be deployed - public clouds and on‑premises. Its ubiquitous nature has it on track to be the next enterprise platform of choice, joining the ranks of Linux and vSphere.

  In addition to public cloud platforms with rapidly growing Kubernetes offerings (e.g., EKS by AWS, AKS by Microsoft Azure, GKE by Google Cloud) - we are also seeing VMware making Kubernetes a first‑class citizen as a part of the Tanzu portfolio and vSphere advancements.

  In addition to integrating with the Public cloud vendors and VMware offerings mentioned above, Kasten K10 Data Management platform also supports Red Hat OpenShift and multiple storage providers which enables Veeam to further enrich the ecosystem offerings for our customers.

• Who is Kasten?

  Kasten is a recognized industry leader in Kubernetes Backup and Disaster Recovery. Kasten’s K10 Data Management Platform, purpose‑built for Kubernetes, provides enterprise operations teams an easy‑to‑use, scalable, and secure system for Kubernetes backup and application mobility with unparalleled operational simplicity.

  Anecdotally, several customers and analysts have described Kasten as the ‘Veeam for Kubernetes’. This alludes to the commonality in approach of being a software solution with a focus on making Backup as easy as 1‑2‑3 and giving customers the freedom of choice in terms of the underlying infrastructure.

• Is Kasten now a Veeam company or subsidiary?

  Veeam has acquired Kasten, but it [Kasten] will operate as a separate Kubernetes Business Unit within Veeam.

• Will there be any organizational changes in Veeam as a result of this acquisition?

  Veeam’s organizational structure will remain the same. Kasten will operate as a separate Kubernetes Business Unit (BU) within Veeam. Kasten’s founders, Niraj Tolia and Vaibhav Kamra, will lead the business unit – Tolia as its President and General Manager, and Kamra as Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Kubernetes BU. Tolia will report directly to Bill Largent, Veeam’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

• Will there be any changes to Veeam’s BOD or Executive team?

  No, the Veeam leadership team remains unchanged.

• How does the acquisition benefit Veeam’s customers?

  As applications using microservice‑based architectures have quickly gained traction in the enterprise, this shift has established a new segment of application development methodology known as DevOps. Containers are a critical component of this DevOps‑led infrastructure and application modernization, and Kubernetes has emerged as the dominant container orchestration platform – creating a significant opportunity for a single data protection platform that includes virtual, physical, cloud and Kubernetes environments.

  Veeam recognizes the strategic importance of this environment, the increasing importance of providing modern data management that is deeply integrated into Kubernetes, and the growth of DevOps to improve quality, increase scalability, and accelerate application delivery while reducing daily management. With Kasten’s K10 Data Management Platform, Veeam will now be able to offer enterprise operations teams an easy‑to‑use, scalable, and secure system for Kubernetes Backup and application mobility with unparalleled operational simplicity.

  We are taking a very important next step to accommodate our customers’ shift to container adoption in order to protect Kubernetes‑native workloads on‑premises and across multi‑cloud environments. This significant milestone strengthens Veeam’s commitment to continue to deliver the industry’s leading Cloud Data Management platform that will support data protection for container‑based applications built in Kubernetes environments.

• How will the acquisition impact Customer Support?

  The acquisition will not impact Veeam’s Customer Support. Veeam and Kasten are highly complementary partners and Veeam will benefit from the groundswell of support for Kubernetes among its customers and prospects. Customer support for K10, Kasten’s enterprise focused container management platform, will be managed by the Kasten team.

• What are the plans related to Kasten’s existing K10 commercial offerings?

  To help with seamless operations and customer experience during the acquisition close and integration period, customers can continue to purchase existing Kasten SKUs from the sales channels established by Kasten.

  Customers should know that their investments will be backed by the Veeam organization which is world renowned in terms of the customer focus and commitment to success.

• I am an existing Kasten customer. What is the impact of this announcement on my investment in Kasten K10?

  There will be no change to Kasten’s day‑to‑day operations and Kasten will continue to be 100% committed to customers’ success. It’s business as usual only now Kasten is joining the global leader in data management. Customers can expect to benefit from Kasten leveraging Veeam’s GTM expertise, industry leading R&D, and world‑renowned customer success model.