In this interview from VeeamON 2026 in New York City, Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst at ZK Research LLC, joins theCUBE's Dave Vellante and Krista Case to discuss Veeam's bid to own the AI trust layer — the missing link between data protection and enterprise AI confidence. Kerravala argues that AI's promise of democratizing expertise remains unfulfilled because users still need deep domain knowledge to catch bad outputs, a problem rooted in unvalidated data. He explains how Veeam's acquisition of Securiti AI enables a unified control plane, consolidating data protection and security visibility into a single dashboard for governing how AI workloads access and use enterprise data.
The conversation also explores how CISOs are being pulled into data protection decisions they once treated as someone else's responsibility. Kerravala notes that ransomware recovery was Veeam's original bridge into the security ecosystem, but AI is now forcing a full convergence of data and security disciplines. He breaks down the growing risk of unsanctioned AI tool use and why enterprises increasingly need a validated, governed data layer before AI can deliver reliable results at scale. From the competitive dynamics — where hyperscalers, data platforms and security vendors are all converging on the same territory — to Veeam's positioning as the single platform spanning both sides of that equation, Kerravala makes the case that VeeamON 2026 marks a genuine inflection point for a company with the heritage, head start and IPO ambitions to pull it off.
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Zeus Kerravala, ZK Research
In this interview from VeeamON 2026 in New York City, Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst at ZK Research LLC, joins theCUBE's Dave Vellante and Krista Case to discuss Veeam's bid to own the AI trust layer — the missing link between data protection and enterprise AI confidence. Kerravala argues that AI's promise of democratizing expertise remains unfulfilled because users still need deep domain knowledge to catch bad outputs, a problem rooted in unvalidated data. He explains how Veeam's acquisition of Securiti AI enables a unified control plane, consolidating data protection and security visibility into a single dashboard for governing how AI workloads access and use enterprise data.
The conversation also explores how CISOs are being pulled into data protection decisions they once treated as someone else's responsibility. Kerravala notes that ransomware recovery was Veeam's original bridge into the security ecosystem, but AI is now forcing a full convergence of data and security disciplines. He breaks down the growing risk of unsanctioned AI tool use and why enterprises increasingly need a validated, governed data layer before AI can deliver reliable results at scale. From the competitive dynamics — where hyperscalers, data platforms and security vendors are all converging on the same territory — to Veeam's positioning as the single platform spanning both sides of that equation, Kerravala makes the case that VeeamON 2026 marks a genuine inflection point for a company with the heritage, head start and IPO ambitions to pull it off.
In this interview from VeeamON 2026 in New York City, Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst at ZK Research LLC, joins theCUBE's Dave Vellante and Krista Case to discuss Veeam's bid to own the AI trust layer — the missing link between data protection and enterprise AI confidence. Kerravala argues that AI's promise of democratizing expertise remains unfulfilled because users still need deep domain knowledge to catch bad outputs, a problem rooted in unvalidated data. He explains how Veeam's acquisition of Securiti AI enables a unified control plane, cons...Read more
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What do you think about Veeam’s claim that “AI trust” is the missing layer and constitutes a new category?add
Is the emerging layer that harmonizes and protects data for AI-driven analysis — combining data protection, AI/data trust, and identity/security controls — becoming a distinct market category that could be recognized in analyst evaluations like Gartner's Magic Quadrant?add
>> Okay. We're rolling on at Veeam at Hudson Yards in New York City. I'm Dave Vellante with Krista Case. Zeus Kerravala here, extraordinary analyst, founder and principal analyst ZK Research. Hello, my friend.
Zeus Kerravala
>> Hey, Dave.
Dave Vellante
>> Thanks for making some time.
Zeus Kerravala
>> And CUBE Collective.
Dave Vellante
>> And member of theCUBE Collective.
Zeus Kerravala
>> That's right.
Dave Vellante
>> Thanks for the reminder. Love having you on. It seems like we have a good cadence. We are on at MWC. I think we had you on it at RSA and other. We've been down in New York Stock Exchange here in the city. Okay, so Veeam, making the case that AI trust is that missing layer, creating a new category. Pretty bold. You've been following this company for a long time. What do you think?
Zeus Kerravala
>> Yeah. In fact, I've heard other people talk about it. At WEF this year I met with Guy Diedrich at Cisco who runs the CDA program. We actually had a long discussion about that then. You don't trust AI, you trust people that make decisions that use AI. Now, people of course need the right data to be able to make those decisions and the confidence that the AI is making the right call. So, I do think that that trust layer is something that I think a lot of us grapple with. We all use AI in our jobs regularly. I use it all the time. And then, you're never quite sure... Right now, you have to have a lot of domain knowledge to take advantage of AI. I was asking Gemini to do some analysis of stocks for me, I knew one of the market caps that game was way off, but that's only because I have the domain knowledge. So, the whole concept of AI is to democratize access to expertise. You shouldn't have to have deep domain knowledge to use it, but today you do and you do because we don't fully trust the data that we get back from it.
Dave Vellante
>> Well, this is interesting point you bring up because I mean, I know from my own experience that 100% of the time that I ask AI to go do some financial analysis, literally 100% of the time, it gets something wrong. And so, what that tells me is that missing layer that Anand talked about, he's right on, data and AI trust, but there's a software layer which is not Veeam's responsibility, which is the harmonization of that data, pulling in different elements from financial reports of 10(ks)s, of earnings transcripts, et cetera. How do you reconcile all that? That's not Veeam's job, but it is Veeam's job to protect it, whether it's a SaaS company, like Palantir, or Celonis, or a ServiceNow gets that right, it's their job to protect it. So, that is kind of a new category. I mean, are we going to see it in a Gartner Magic Quadrant? Is it that much of a category in your view?
Zeus Kerravala
>> You think about it's part of the overall AI ecosystem. I suppose it could become a category. I mean, it's a coming together of the acquisition they made of Securiti AI and their core business. There's lots of people in the core business of backup and recovery. The question is, do you have the visibility into the things the AI layer is doing around the data to make the call that there was a breach here, there's a problem? Roll it back to this particular point. And I suppose if AI is really going to become the tool that we all use in our lives all day long, then I suppose, yeah, I mean, I could see all the players on the security side having to come to the data side and vice versa. And so, you think from an evolutionary perspective, you're playing on two sides of that coin, you need to have the other, either through partnership or product development.
Dave Vellante
>> Exactly. I was going to say it's very much a convergence of data protection and security with identity security. And we've talked about that a little bit with Veeam so far today, and we heard that at the keynote this morning that in addition to being able to have these security controls and recoverability of data and the insights into the sensitivity of the data, you need to understand how it's being accessed and used. And that's really where your identity and access management side of that .
Zeus Kerravala
>> And there's a lot of tools that do part of it, right? There's DLP tools. You look at all the SASE vendors, zero trust. They're all trying to figure out how you protect corporations, the data they have from being exposed to things that shouldn't be exposed or people using data they shouldn't be using. I was talking to one of the market research firms here, the big one, I won't say which one, but they just put the kibosh on all AI tools that aren't sanctioned because of that problem. And there's a lot of value it can bring, but you got to be careful with how you use it, where you use it and what data you use. And that's the problem that we have is there's so much data out there, some of it good, some of it bad, that it's a little bit like if you threw a junior analyst at something and said, "Go do the analysis," the financial analyst you asked them, 100% of the time they would make an error because-
Dave Vellante
>> They wouldn't catch it.
Zeus Kerravala
>> Right. Because they don't know what data's good, what data's bad. And so, something's got to regulate that for the AI to be able to work.
Dave Vellante
>> But there's a layer of context which is Veeam's responsibility and that's what I call the operational and technical metadata. And there's another layer which fixes that problem, which is not Veeam's responsibility-
Zeus Kerravala
>> Kind of.
Dave Vellante
>> Well, I guess from the standpoint of it could be, you're right, it could be, is that a current source? Because they got the date metadata. Is it in that calendar year versus fiscal year format? Is it the right data?
Zeus Kerravala
>> And it is a validated source of data to use. They kind of play in it, but kind of don't.
Dave Vellante
>> But you could see them all. I mean, you've got the data platform guys, the Snowflake, Databricks. You've got the security folks. You've got the data protection people, like Veeam. And you certainly have the hyperscalers all trying to get in there. You play golf with a lot of CISOs, changing the subject, do the CISOs see this space? I'm reluctant to say... Well, let's call it data protection because it's, broadly speaking, data protection, but it's more than that, recovery and resilience. Now, it's business resilience. Do the CISOs that you know well think of that space as a fundamental component of their security stack of their purview or is it a thing in the side that they're slowly migrating in?
Zeus Kerravala
>> I think it's an adjacency today that they have to migrate in. I mean, Veeam did really come to prominence and grow their share through ransomware recovery, which you would argue falls under the purview of the CISO, but it only kind of does. They're responsible for recovering the data when they had a ransomware breach, but ultimately, the tools that they use fell to somebody else. And I think if they're ultimately going to be responsible for the protection of the data that drives the AI, that powers the company, it does need to fall under them. I don't know how they can avoid it anymore.
Dave Vellante
>> How do you see Veeam differentiating from the competition? I mean, the market's not that crowded, but you got four or five companies that are in the data protection space. They call it data management. They're all doing ransomware protection. They're doing cyber resiliency. What differentiates Veeam?
Zeus Kerravala
>> Well, I do think it's the last acquisition they made, the security. I think it's a very good tool. And I think the fact that they built that one dashboard, in fact, I was asking Tom Murphy this morning in the keynote. I thought they were showing some capabilities and I said, "I thought Securiti AI already did this?" They said, "But we couldn't do it in one dashboard before." And so, they're trying to make Veeam the single control plane for that data and AI trust layer. And I'm sure the rubric's and... they're all going to head down that path sometime, but I think they got a bit of an early head start here right now.
Dave Vellante
>> Well, it's a great TAM expansion move. The last thing you want to do is you want to just get stuck in back up and recover-
Zeus Kerravala
>> And valuation too, right? So, as they look to go public.
Dave Vellante
>> Valuation. I mean, but that is the mainspring, the heritage of backup and recovery, but you've got to build a product set around that and be able to respond. All right. Give me the last thoughts on VeeamON 2026 here in New York City. I think Anand said his first time in New York City. We've seen him in Vegas-
Zeus Kerravala
>> Yeah, I was a little surprised....
Dave Vellante
>> we've seen them in-
Zeus Kerravala
>> Miami.
Dave Vellante
>> They were in Nashville.
Zeus Kerravala
>> Miami, yep. Miami as well. Yeah.
Dave Vellante
>> In Miami.>> Yep.
Dave Vellante
>> So, what are your final thoughts on that?
Zeus Kerravala
>> I think it's an inflection point for the company. And this company has always been a company who was squarely in that backup and recovery. In fact, you look at all the analysts and press that come, they have a data background and they were security adjacent. And so, they enjoyed a lot of growth by being able to participate in the security ecosystem without being a security vendor. Now, they are squarely in the security ecosystem and the question is, can they create a single market that addresses both sides of that coin? That's an easier thing to say than to do, but if there's somebody that can do it, it's them.
Dave Vellante
>> But to your point, there are definitely a number of... I see industry analysts from the security space here.
Zeus Kerravala
>> Yes. Well, yourself included.
Dave Vellante
>> That's impressive.>> Yeah, yeah.
Dave Vellante
>> Of course.>> Yeah. I mean, I'm straddling both worlds these days, resilience and security. Yeah, absolutely.
Dave Vellante
>> Right, and that's sort of a sign that these worlds are coming together.>> Yes.
Dave Vellante
>> All right, Zeus, we got to go. Thanks so much for making some time for us.
Zeus Kerravala
>> All right. Thanks.
Dave Vellante
>> Appreciate it. All right. Keep it right there. Dave Vellante for Krista Case. theCUBE's coverage VeeamON 2026 from the Big Apple. We'll be right back right after this short break.
Dave Vellante