Ratmir Timashev, Veeam, at VMworld 2014 with John Furrier and Dave Vellante @theCUBE #vmworld2014 Virtualization is still one of the key enablers for the modern IT, but cloud and storage technologies are what drive the overall growth in modern IT environments, said Ratmir Timashev, President and CEO of Veeam Software, describing expanding market opportunities for new technologies and innovation. Speaking with theCUBE co-hosts John Furrier and Dave Vellante during SiliconANGLE’s live coverage from VMware Inc.’s annual VMworld conference, Timashev immediately delves into one of the hottest new technologies in IT: containers. “Every once in a while something comes up and everybody talks about that, it remains to be seen,” said Timashev, referring to Docker, Inc. and its rise in popularity for its use of container technology. He further professed Veeam’s vendor neutrality and mentioned both VMware and Microsoft Corp. as strategic partners. “In the last several years, the business requirements for IT have changed dramatically,” Timashev stated. Everyone in an organization now needs access to data from everywhere, 24/7, using all kinds of devices. With legacy tools, businesses can’t achieve what he called “always-on business”. Veeam is built on top of new virtualization technologies, thus offering availability for a modern data center. Such availability means a company can recover any application with no data loss. Commenting on the state of backup, Timashev said legacy backup was broken “because it was not built for the new data center,” unable to satisfy the needs of an always-on business. This fact drives the need for new modern solutions for data protection which, according to Timashev, is about “more than just backup, it’s guaranteeing all your data and applications are avail 24/7, not just the critical ones.” The reason why Veeam is so successful, according to Timashev is that “people need availability. The legacy term is High Availability (HA), which is used by rich enterprises for very small mission critical applications.” In this scenario, HA supports the mission critical applications, while there is nothing more than backup for the rest of the applications. “Veeam offers availability for all your applications,” Timashev boasted. Commenting on their partnership with VMware and the success they’ve had so far, Timashev said “customers are choosing Veeam for a reason. VMware has been very successful because they were able to build the ecosystem of different software and hardware vendors. Veeam solved an important problem in this ecosystem.” Compared to legacy vendors, Veeam does not come with baggage. “It’s data protection built on virtualization,” Timashev said, providing an equally disruptive solution. While traditional vendors spend 80 percent of the time thinking about ways of supporting their installed base, Veeam can innovate and move much faster, Timashev reiterated. Vellante pointed out that legacy is hard to get rid of, and asked how typical customer interactions occurred. Timashev described that whenever he has to talk to the press or analysts about the company’s success, he states customers choose Veeam because “it’s 10 times better than legacy. To change the vendor for data protection requires great effort. The customers choose to go through all this hassle because we are 10 times better.”