Veeam Software is building on its leadership position in data protection with continuing innovation, including the recent introduction of Veeam Data Cloud. In a presentation at VeeamON24, the company’s ongoing roadshow, Veeam said that in the past two years, there has been a significant shift among corporate buyers from traditional data backup services to backup software. Veeam Data Cloud is positioned to take advantage of that continuing shift. In his presentation, Russ Kerscher, senior director of product marketing at Veeam, said it was only a few years ago that organizations had an overwhelming preference for on-premises backup software managed inside their data centers.On-premises data management has long been the choice of organizations that prefer the traditional approach. More recently, backup services or outsourcing to a cloud service provider has grown in popularity. But, as Kerscher explained, there is now an “overwhelming shift toward backup as a service” to protect organizations’ data. That’s where Veeam Data Cloud—which the company calls “resilient data protection made easy”—comes in. “Veeam gives you the ability to protect your data your way,” said Kerscher.Designed for Microsoft customersVeeam Data Cloud is custom-built for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure users, providing specialized backup and restore capabilities. Organizations get the secure data protection services they need “without the complexity of building and maintaining infrastructure,” said Kerscher. Customers have access to what he calls “a secure architecture that is scalable and enterprise-grade, built into the backup service” in an “all-inclusive package.”Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365Veeam has been a market leader with its Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 for some time. Now, the same capabilities are available in a backup-as-a-service (BaaS) offering, which includes software and infrastructure along with unlimited storage. Teams get a “point-and-click user interface where you can understand what’s happening inside your environments,” Kerscher said. Data Cloud provides users with fixed pricing based on data quantity. “You understand what your pricing is going to be each month and have an overview of how your costs affect your overall environment,” he said.Veeam describes the interface as easy to access, secure, and intuitive. “You simply log into the website address, and you can get going creating backup jobs and doing restores. You no longer have to download any software, and you no longer have to build the infrastructure,” said Kerscher.Veeam Data Cloud for AzureA service “on Azure for Azure,” according to the company, Veeam Data Cloud for Azure provides a fast ROI, according to Kerscher, because customers “can remove blockers like implementation and patching and remediating misconfigurations within the system, because the backup service covers all of that.”Operating within the already familiar Azure environment is a plus for IT teams. Kerscher said users can “leverage best practices already built for the Azure well-architected framework” that teams are comfortable using.Veeam supported its Data Cloud claims with a case study about McGrath Estate Agents, a leading residential real estate group in Sydney, Australia. The firm has more than 11,000 Microsoft 365 users, according to Veeam, and is a heavy user of Exchange Online and OneDrive for Business, with more than “100 terabytes of combined data within those two Microsoft services,” according to Kerscher. The real estate company is also a power user of SharePoint and has migrated many virtual machines to the cloud.In 2021, McGrath migrated from on-premises Exchange to the online version and soon realized that it made sense to bring other parts of the organization’s workloads to the cloud. This enabled them to leave behind aging infrastructure with many remote servers. By late 2022, the company was ready to move on from more of their physical servers and some of their data center VMs, said Kerscher.As McGrath evolved its Microsoft 365 implementation, it developed an unprotected gap and needed to close it quickly. To enhance security, McGrath began migrating some of its VMs and physical servers to the cloud. That’s when they added Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft Azure to these newly migrated servers.“Fast forward to today, and McGrath’s data technology and backup service are setting the business up for success,” said Kerscher. As McGrath improved its data security by moving to Azure, the firm also saved money by “decreasing its data protection expenses by 50%,” he added.Improving speed, access to data, and—most of all—security by migrating to Microsoft 365 and Azure Cloud with a backup-as-a-service offering, such as Veeam Data Cloud, is a strong consideration for any data-intensive organization.Zeus Kerravala is the founder and principal analyst with ZK Research.Read his other Network Computing articles here.Related articles: