Insight Partners buys Veeam for $5bn

Private Equity firm Insight Partners is acquiring the data protection powerhouse Veeam Software for about $5bn.

Veeam, founded and owned by Russians based in Switzerland, will now become a US company, and eligible to bid for US Government contacts. It will have US-based executives, with William Largent, currently EVP for Operations, promoted to CEO, taking over from co-founder Andrei Baranov.

Largent said in a press statement today: “Veeam has enjoyed rapid global growth over the last decade and we see tremendous opportunity for future growth, particularly in the U.S. market. With the acquisition, we are excited that our current U.S. workforce of more than 1,200 will be expanded and strengthened to acquire and support more customers… we believe this acquisition will allow us to scale our team and technology at an unrivalled pace.”

Veeam has achieved a $1bn annual run rate and claims more than 365,000 customers worldwide. These include 81 per cent of the Fortune 500. The company says it is the leader by units and revenue in the software data protection market.

Mike Triplett, Insight Partners managing director and Veeam board member, said: “Veeam’s strong growth, coupled with high customer retention, unparalleled data management solutions and the opportunities to expand services into new markets, make Veeam one of the most exciting software companies in the world today.”

He would say that, though, having just invested big bucks in the company for a second time. Insight Partners invested $500m in Veeam in January 2019.

The Veeam acquisition is expected to close by the end of March this year.

Co-Founders Andrei Baronov and Ratmir Timashev will step down from the Board. Timashev is currently EVP worldwide Sales and Marketing and here is no information on how that role will change. Blocks & Files expects him to step down in due course.

Veeam background

Veeam co-founders Andrei Baranov (left) and Ratmir Timashev (right).

Baranov and Timashev founded Veeam in 2006 and took in no outside funding until the Insight $500m injection in January 2019. They have had an amazing run of growth, capitalising on the VMware-led server virtualization boom. 

Reading between the lines of the acquisition announcement there is an indication that US sales are lower than anticipated, and that this can now change, driving Veeam revenues further upwards.

Veeam bought US firm N2WS in 2018 a year ago for its cloud-native enterprise backup and disaster recovery for Amazon Web Services. However N2WS was divested in August 2019 because it was unable to bid for US federal contracts.