Veeam Acquisition of Alcion Reflects Vital Importance of Data Resiliency

It’s been a big week for Veeam, demonstrating the growing importance of data resiliency. On September 18, Veeam acquired Alcion, an AI-driven data management startup. With the acquisition, Alcion CEO and cofounder Niraj Tolia becomes Veeam's CTO.

Data Resilience as a Service

Anand Eswaran, CEO of Veeam, the Seattle-based market share leader in data resilience, said Tolia’s role is to “accelerate innovation of data resilience as a service.” Veeam’s working relationship with Tolia and Vaibhav Kamra, Alcion CTO and cofounder, dates back to when the tech entrepreneurs founded Kasten, a Kubernetes-native data protection platform Veeam acquired in 2020. Along with Tolia and Kamra, the rest of the Alcion team has also joined Veeam.

World Events Lead to Greater Emphasis on Data Resiliency

Many of the macro events of the past few years—notably the war in Ukraine and the CrowdStrike incident in July of this year—have made data resiliency a top-of-mind issue for cybersecurity companies and their enterprise clients. Veeam’s acquisition of Alcion is timely and expands what the company can do for its current and future customers.

Data resiliency was already a big challenge when companies stored all their data on-premises. But now that data is scattered across a multi-cloud infrastructure, the task is exponentially more complex.

While neither Alcion nor any single company can address all of the data resiliency challenges facing enterprises, it greatly simplifies the issue for Microsoft 365, one of the world’s most widely used SaaS applications.

Veeam Adds Valuable Data Resilience Expertise with Alcion

The acquisition announcement highlighted the background and experience Tolia and Kamra bring to Veeam, citing that the duo’s “combined expertise in data management and cloud-native technologies, coupled with a deep understanding of Veeam’s strategic direction and culture, will be invaluable in driving innovation forward.”

Eswaran expanded on the value Tolia brings to the role of CTO, calling him “one of those rare individuals who not only understands where the market is headed but also possesses the skills and vision to bring that future to life for our customers. He has already demonstrated this by cofounding Kasten, which has become the #1 solution for Kubernetes data resilience since being acquired by Veeam in 2020. His proven track record, combined with the explosive growth of Veeam Data Cloud—the fastest growing product in Veeam’s history—creates a tremendous opportunity for Veeam to redefine the market once again for data resilience.”

Tolia, as CTO, will focus on product strategy and engineering for the Veeam Data Cloud. According to the announcement, that solution “expands Veeam’s industry-leading data resilience solutions into a powerful, flexible suite of services. " Tolia will work closely with Anton Gostev, Veeam's chief product officer, to “ensure customers continue to benefit from Veeam’s unrivaled innovation in data resilience.”

“Everything starts with the customer,” Tolia said in the announcement. “In our digital world, protecting data and ensuring its resilience against threats and outages is more critical than ever. Combining Alcion’s AI and security capabilities with the robust power of Veeam Data Cloud gives us an extraordinary opportunity to enhance our solutions and reinforce Veeam’s leadership.”

Veeam customers, partners, and prospects will have the chance to engage with the new additions when the company holds its virtual VeeamON Data Resilience Summit on October 1 in EMEA and the Americas and October 2 in Asia.

Zeus Kerravala is the founder and principal analyst with ZK Research.

Read his other Network Computing articles here.