Veeam and Kasten’s Modern Data Management Platform Will Speed the Production Deployment of Container-based Applications

BAAR, Switzerland, Oct 6, 2020 — Veeam Software, the leader in Backup solutions that deliver Cloud Data Management, today announced it has acquired Kasten, the market leader for Kubernetes Backup and Disaster Recovery, in a cash and stock transaction valued at $150M.

According to 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, nearly three-quarters of organizations are currently using or planning to use Kubernetes within the next two years.[i] Veeam believes this shift creates a massive opportunity for the future of data protection and the acquisition reinforces its commitment to support customers’ business transformation to future-ready architectures. With this new acquisition, Veeam will integrate Kasten into its market-leading Cloud Data Management platform for modern data protection and radically simplify data management for enterprises.

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 the Kasten 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.

“Veeam was built on offering the best data protection for virtual and modern data infrastructures, and we have continued to expand our offerings to include industry-leading protection for physical and cloud environments,” said Danny Allan, Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Product Strategy at Veeam. “With the acquisition of our partner Kasten, 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.”

While the Kasten K10 platform will continue to be available independently, it will also be integrated into Veeam Backup & Replication™ to offer a comprehensive data management solution. With Kasten’s protection of container workloads and Veeam support for virtual machines, physical servers, SaaS applications and cloud workloads, this best of breed technology will provide all organizations a single platform for modern data protection.

“The enterprise landscape is shifting as applications rapidly transition from monoliths to containers and microservices,” said Niraj Tolia, Chief Executive Officer at Kasten. “With Kubernetes at the core of this infrastructural shift, Kasten’s innovation in Kubernetes-native data management combined with Veeam’s expertise in Backup, both on-premises and in multi-cloud environments, will significantly advance the state of modern data management. Veeam’s success has been a beacon of inspiration for the Kasten team and we are very excited to join forces with a company where there is so much philosophical alignment.”

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, Kubernetes BU. All teams including sales, marketing, R&D, and customer service will stay intact to continue growing the business with increased investment in people and resources.

Veeam’s commitment to the Kubernetes community will also continue through the contribution to Open Source and other community projects that Kasten has supported, including the Kubernetes Storage Special Interest Group and the Data Protection Working Group in Kubernetes, which aim to improve storage operations and promote data protection support for the Kubernetes user base. Additionally, Veeam will continue to support Kanister, Kasten’s open source project that extends support for and execution of data management tasks in Kubernetes, and the development of kopia, a fast and secure open-source tool to manage Backups.

For more information, visit https://www.veeam.com and https://www.veeam.com/blog/kasten-acquisition-announcement.html.

Supporting Quotes

“Containers in microservice architectures are foundational to many emerging cloud-native applications. Protecting and recovering containerized environments has very different requirements from virtual infrastructure alone. The Veeam-Kasten combination could allow enterprises to protect and recover Kubernetes-based cloud-native container applications along with virtual and physical workloads from a single cloud data management framework. With both vendors being part of the Insight Partner’s portfolio, and Veeam already partnering with Kasten to enable application centric container data protection capabilities, this acquisition seems like a natural next step. Having Kasten now be a part of Veeam positions the combination very well to meet the majority of data protection and recovery needs for multi-cloud environments.” – Phil Goodwin, research director, IDC

“We are excited to see Veeam and Kasten coming together to deliver the leading Kubernetes-native Backup solution. Given our use of Veeam to protect our critical business data and infrastructure and the increasing footprint of Kubernetes in our environment, this combined solution will provide us with the flexibility to protect our applications and data, no matter what environment they are deployed in, and the ease-of-use to help scale our teams. Knowing that we have the right Backup and disaster recovery infrastructure in place for both virtualized and cloud-native environments will allow our teams to move faster and with confidence.” – Markus Kretzer, Head of IT, Buhl Data Service

Source: Veeam