There's a lot going on in the data protection and cyber security markets - it can be hard to keep up with all the news. That's where The Competitive Corner's Newsletter comes in, to help curate and distill the most pertinent movers and shakers each month to make your job easier.
Yes, I realize we skipped July, but even I get to take some time off. August was another busy month in the data protection market with the key newsmaker being the release of the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup Software Solutions. GigaOM also released their latest industry report, and rounding out our other key newsmakers we have #Veeam, #Commvault, #Acronis, and #Rubrik. Below you'll find a breakdown of why these news items matter to you, links to the original articles, and related blogs for further research and insights.
August 2024 Competitive Headlines:
(click any headline to jump directly to the analysis)
Veeam Brings Data Resilience to Over 21 Million Microsoft 365 Users with New Microsoft 365 Backup Storage Capabilities for Veeam Data Cloud
[Link to Original Article]
Why it Matters?
Around a year ago, Microsoft introduced a fresh backup storage alternative named "Microsoft 365 Backup Storage" (MBS). This allows for the rapid creation and storage of backup copies of M365 data within the M365 trust boundary itself, rather than transferring them to other clouds or storage systems. This approach significantly boosts backup and recovery speed by keeping the data nearby and avoiding throttling that could slow down the process.
Both Veeam and AvePoint were quick to announce themselves as "launch partners" for the new MBS service in November 2023, showcasing their solutions and future MBS support once the service becomes generally available. Now that MBS is almost ready for full release, Veeam has confirmed that their Veeam Backup for M365 has been updated to include support for the MBS option for storing backups starting in August when the service becomes operational. This enhancement will be accessible through both the traditional "build-your-own Veeam" software solution and their newer Veeam Data Cloud BaaS offering.
In a similar fashion, AvePoint unveiled their "Cloud Backup Express" product, leveraging the newly accessible MBS solution. In line with this, Commvault introduced their new "Commvault Cloud with Premium Microsoft 365 Backup Storage" feature. Keepit also revealed their support for MBS within their solution, a notable move as they operate their own datacenters, making this their first integration with a non-Keepit storage option.
Commvault Announces Fiscal 2025 First Quarter Financial Results
[Link to Original Article ]
Why it Matters?
Commvault has announced their FY25Q1 results and despite Q1 typically seeing smaller growth compared to the prior Q4, Commvault saw significant success and are on target to finally cross the $1B ARR in 2026. Citing stronger cross-sell and displacement of legacy backup vendors like Veritas (specifically called out) + growth in their deals over $100k, here are Commvault's Fiscal 2025 First Quarter Highlights –
Total revenues were $224.7 million, up 13% YoY
Total annualized recurring revenue (“ARR”) grew to $803 million, up 17% year over year
Subscription revenue was $124.1 million, up 28% year over year
Subscription ARR1 grew to $636 million, up 27% year over year
Income from operations (EBIT) was $18.4 million, an operating margin of 8.2%
Non-GAAP EBIT2 was $48.3 million, an operating margin of 21.5%
Operating cash flow was $44.7 million, with free cash flow2 of $43.8 million
Commvault anticipates sustained growth in the upcoming quarter, aiming for an Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) of over $900 (a 15% Year-over-Year increase). The stock has surged by 99% since the start of the year and displays ongoing momentum. In contrast, Rubrik's stock remains near its IPO price, showing a modest increase of approximately 3%.
The 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Enterprise Backup and Recovery Software Solutions has been published
Why it Matters?
The Gartner Magic Quadrant for backup is one of the definitive industry report on who's doing what in the enterprise market. Other reports I'd recommend reviewing are the Forrester Waves as well as the GigaOM Radar/Sonar reports that all cover different aspects of the data protection and cyber security markets. I suggest reading each of them when they are published. While I can't share the Gartner report with you directly, most of the vendors in the MQ have published links to the reprints of the annual report. For example, you can access the full report here (thanks to Druva!).
I strongly recommend reading the FULL Gartner report itself, as they detail their definition of the market, outline the criteria for evaluation in more detail, and key elements of consideration that are unique to this year’s report. It is important to have this background understanding when building your own perspectives on this year’s report. It is also important to keep in mind that this report focuses on the enterprise market and vendors’ suitability therein. A vendor might not position strongly for enterprise clients, but be an excellent choice for mid-market, SMB, or MSP customers.
While there were no new leaders this year, Druva continues to edge closer and closer to that quadrant. Acronis, with their focus more on the MSP side of the market, was the only vendor to depart the MQ this year.
Interestingly, there actually are no vendors at all in the Challengers quadrant this year as Arcserve departed that space for the Niche players quadrant leaving it empty.
Private equity house EQT buys majority stake in Acronis
[Link to Original Article]
Why it Matters?
Acronis has new ownership as private equity firm, EQT, has bought up the majority stake in the MSP-driven backup company. No financials regarding the deal were disclosed. For those not familiar with either company - EQT is Europe's largest private equity business, and Acronis is (surprisingly) actually a pretty sizable backup company with over 750,000 customers protected through their close to 20,000 MSP partners.
Acronis has both a traditional on-prem backup solution (Cyber Protect) as well as a cloud-based offering (Cyber Protect Cloud) which provides backup and recovery for endpoint, SaaS, physical/virtual servers, and cloud. Their solution is built in their own Acronis Cloud, but customers can also leverage 3rd party storage such as DataDomain. Acronis specializes in catering to
SMB/Mid-market clientele and their GTM strategy is almost 100% via their large MSP ecosystem - hence dropping out of the Gartner MQ for Enterprise backup in 2024. They have strong security features and launched their own AI copilot recently to aid in backup validation and DR orchestration. No doubt this fresh infusion of funds will help them to scale operations and development of new capabilities within their platform.
Commvault scores top spot on GigaOm's cloud-native data protection list
[Link to Original Article]
Why it Matters?
GigaOm has published a new Sonar report focused specifically on cloud-native data protection. Alongside the other industry reports from Gartner and Forrester, GigaOm's perspectives on the market are always valuable.
In this latest report, Commvault and Veritas are rated as leaders & forward movers and positioned closest to the middle with their platform plays. Acronis is also a leader and forward mover, but sitting just on the edge of leader/challenger spaces. Druva is also very well positioned with their Data Security Cloud platform ranked as a leader and fast mover - signifying that they are
innovating at a faster pace than many other competitors.
Similarly, HYCU is also a leader and fast mover, but on the niche/feature play side vs. having a platform approach to cloud-native backup. Veeam and Cohesity are both notably absent from the report.
Top 5 vendors by score and ratings are:
Commvault – 2.9 (Platform Play Leader, Forward Mover)
Veritas – 2.8 (Platform Play Leader, Forward Mover)
Druva – 2.6 (Platform Play Leader, Forward Mover)
HYCU – 2.6 (Feature Play Leader, Fast Mover)
Acronis – 2.4 (Platform Play Leader, Forward Mover)
A full reprint of the report is available here, thanks to Commvault.
Commvault Platform Release 2024E is now Generally Available
[Link to Original Article]
Why it Matters?
The Commvault Platform Release 2024E has been in "early-access" since early Jan/Feb of this year, but is now officially GA. There are a LOT of new features dropped into this update, which you can catch up on in the full article linked above.
Highlights include:
Commvault "Arlie" - Commvault's AI tools were officially launched with the 2024E release and includes features for:
API Code Assist - use AI to accelerate custom scripting and automation
Arlie Active Insights - troubleshooting assistance and recommendations based on previously resolved tickets
Arlie Chatbot - providing help and walkthroughs for tasks within the Commvault Command Center (main UX)
Support for DB recovery (when running inside of VMs) as part of their Cleanroom solution
Rubrik Enhances SaaS Backup with New Salesforce Protection
[Link to Original Article]
Why it Matters?
Rubrik had announced their forthcoming Salesforce backup support back during their Rubrik Forward event in May 2024, and now the Salesforce Data protection solution is generally available on the Salesforce AppExchange. Based on the limited licensing details, there appears to be multiple tiers as the SFDC AppExchange lists "Salesforce Protection Foundation Edition"...implying they may also have Business and Enterprise license tiers as well. All versions are priced $/user per month, which is pretty standard for SFDC backup offerings.
There are limited details around the actual deployment of the solution (typical Rubrik), but it appears as through the control plane at least is being presented via their Rubrik Security Cloud SaaS (built in GCP), and they imply that Rubrik may also be providing their Azure storage (Rubrik Secure Vault) as a backup target -- however, we cannot confirm 100% if BYOS is an option or even where Rubrik has opted to host the storage in general.
Features include comparison capabilities between backup snapshots and the live environment to quickly identify changed/deleted data in Salesforce as well as support for backup of both production and sandbox orgs. Granular and bulk level recoveries which are capable of maintaining relationships between records and a claim of "restoring records up to 10 levels deep".
What with the recent acquisition of Own by Salesforce, it will be interesting to see what impacts that has on the other vendors currently providing backup and recovery of the CRM tool.
New Veeam Data Platform 12.2 Extends #1 Data Resilience to More Platforms and Applications
[Link to Original Article]
Why it Matters?
Previewed a few weeks ago, Veeam's flagship product "Veeam Backup & Replication (VBR)" v12.2 is now generally available. New Veeam Data Platform v12.2 introduces several new features, including:
Veeam Backup for Proxmox VE
Veeam Backup for MongoDB
Enhanced Veeam Backup for Nutanix AHV integration including expanded Nutanix Prism integration
Expanded Veeam Backup for AWS support adding Amazon FSx and Amazon Redshift backup
Expanded support for Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure to include backup for Azure Cosmos DB and Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2.
Veeam ranked #1 in the 2024 Gartner® Market Share Analysis for Enterprise Backup and Recovery Software Report
[Link to Original Article]
Why it Matters?
According to the latest "Gartner Market Share Analysis: Enterprise Backup and Recovery Software, Worldwide, 2023" report, Veeam has moved into the #1 spot for market share with 15.1% of the market - taking the spot from Veritas. They also reported Veeam as having revenues of $1.5B and an 11.8% growth YoY (2022-2023).. Veeam did not provide any reprints of the full report so it’s hard for folks to see how everyone else was ranked, but we did so here are the top 5 and remember
this is all based on software revenue:
Veeam - 15.1% (up 11.8% from 2022 with revenues of $1.5B)
Veritas - 15% (up 3.2% YoY with $1.49B)
Dell - 12.8% (down 1.8% YoY with $1.27B)
IBM - 10.4% (up 3.3% YoY with $1.04B)
Commvault - 7.6% (up 5.3% YoY with $754M)
The Rest - 39.% (up 6.1% YoY with $3.9B combined across all other enterprise vendors)
We don’t have the full breakdown at hand, but in 2022 Rubrik had 4.4% and Cohesity held 3.85% of the market respectively (according to Gartner’s revenue information). If we assume they moved at the same pace of growth in 2023 as they did in 2022 we would see them positioned as follows:
7. Rubrik - ~5.22% (estimated)
8. Cohesity - ~4.93% (estimated)
I admit I was surprised to see Veritas was growing as they've been a consistent market share donor since the early 2000s, but here we are :)
Written by Matt Tyrer. These posts reflect my own opinion and are not necessarily the opinion of my employer.