In part one we discussed the importance of getting our storage platform right, in part two we look at availability.

The idea that availability is a crucial part of a modern platform was something I first heard from a friend of mine, Michael Cade from Veeam, who introduced me to “availability as part of digital transformation” and how this was changing Veeam’s focus.

This shift is absolutely right, today as we build our modern platforms backup and recovery is still a crucial requirement, however, a focus on availability is at least, if not more, crucial. Today nobody in your business really cares how quickly you can recover a system, what our digitally driven businesses demand is that our systems are always there and downtime in ever more competitive environments is not tolerated.

With that in mind why do I choose Veeam to deliver availability to my modern data platform?

Keep it simple

Whenever I meet a Veeam customer their first comment on Veeam is “it just works”, the power of this rather simple statement should not be underestimated when you are protecting key assets. Too often data protection solutions have been overly complex, inefficient and unreliable and that is something I have always found unacceptable, for business big or small you need a data protection solution you can deploy and then forget and trust it just does what you ask, this is perhaps Veeam’s greatest strength and a crucial driver behind its popularity and what makes it such a good component part of a data platform.

I would actually say Veeam are a bit like the Apple of availability, although much of what they do has been done by others (Veeam didn’t invent data protection, in the same way Apple didn’t invent the smartphone) but what they have done is make it simple and usable and something that just works and can be trusted. Don’t underestimate the importance of this.

Flexibility

If ever there was a byword for modern IT, flexibility could well be it, it’s crucial that any solution and platform we build has the flexibility to react to ever changing business and technological demands. Look at how business needs for technology and the technology itself has changed in the last 10 years and how much our platforms have needed to change to keep up, flash storage, web scale applications, mobility, Cloud, the list goes on.

The following statement sums up Veeam’s view on flexibility perfectly

“Veeam Availability Platform provides businesses and enterprises of all sizes with the means to ensure availability for any application and any data, across any cloud infrastructure”

It is this focus on flexibility that make Veeam such an attractive proposition in the modern data platform, allowing me to design a solution that is flexible enough to meet my different needs, providing availability across my data platform, all with the same familiar toolset regardless of location, workload type or recovery needs.

Integration

As mentioned in part one, no modern data platform will be built with just one vendors tools, not if you want to deliver the control and insight into your data that we demand as a modern business. Veeam, like NetApp, have built a very strong partner ecosystem allowing them to integrate tightly with many vendors, but more than just integrate Veeam deliver additional value allowing me to simplify and do more with my platform (take a look at this blog about how Veeam allows you to get more from NetApp snapshots). Veeam are continuously delivering new integrations and not only with on-prem vendors, but also as mentioned earlier, with a vast range of cloud providers.

This ability to extend the capabilities and simplify the integration of multiple components in a multi-platform, multi-cloud world is very powerful and a crucial part of my data platform architecture.

Strategy

As with NetApp, over the last 18 months it has been the shift in Veeam’s overall strategy that has impressed me more than anything else, although seemingly a simple change, the shift from talking about backup and recovery to availability is significant.

As I said at the opening of this article, in our modern IT platforms nobody is interested in how quickly you can recover something, it’s about availability of crucial systems. A key part of Veeam’s strategy is to “deliver the next generation of availability for the Always-On Enterprise” and you can see this in everything Veeam are doing, focussing on simplicity, ensuring that you can have your workload where you need it when you need it and move those workloads seamlessly between on-prem, cloud and back again.

They have also been very smart, employing a strong leadership team and, as with NetApp, investing in ensuring that cloud services don’t leave a traditionally on-premises focussed technology provider adrift.

The Veeam and NetApp strategies are very similar, and it is this similarity that makes them attractive components in my data platform. I need my component providers to understand technology trends and changes so they, as well as our data platforms, can move and change with them.

Does it have to be Veeam?

In the same way it doesn’t have to be NetApp, of course it doesn’t have to be Veeam, but in exactly the same way, if you are building a platform for your data, then make sure your platform components deliver the kinds of things that we have discussed in the first two parts of this series, ensure that they provide the flexibility we need, the integration with components across your platform and a strategic vision that you are comfortable with, as long as you have that, that will give you rock solid foundations to build on.

In Part Three of this series we will look at building insight, compliance and governance into our data platform.

You can find the Introduction and Part One – “The Storage” below.