Veeam has acquired Object First and its Veeam-only backup target appliance products in a near silent transaction, it has confirmed to B&F.
A Veeam spokesperson said: “We can confirm the successful acquisition of Object First by Veeam.”
Object First supplies the Ootbi immutable backup storage appliance, using object storage software. The news was revealed in a Veeam Community post by Morgan Munck, an infrastructure consultant at Paris, France-based GOTO, an IT services and consulting company; not by Object First or Veeam.
Veeam has developed its own Linux-based, Veeam Software Appliance, to store its backups, announcing it in September last year. It was x86 server hardware-agnostic, with no linked supplier deals. Veeam CEO Anand Eswaren said at the time: “The new Veeam Software Appliance runs out of the box.”
“Out of the box” is a term used by Object First when referring to its Ootbi appliance; Ootbi literally standing for “Out of the box immutability” with the system running virtually straight away once it’s been installed. So Veeam at that point was competing with its original founders’ pet product project – as Object First was started up by Veeam founders Ratmir Timashev and Andrei Baronov in 2022, after they had left Veeam.
Its CEO is David Bennet and the company has been growing fast, recently announcing a 291 percent year/year increase in global bookings for the third 2025 quarter.
Its also been developing new hardware models to extend its range. At the beginning of 2025 there were three-node clusters with 64, 128 and 192 TB raw capacity options per 2RU node. Now there 20, 40, 64, 128, 216, and 432 TB capacity options and 3 or 4-node clusters.
The product features an NVMe SSD landing zone, for fast backup data ingress, and disk drives for actual retention. Object First has also been building in more security features, such as a honeypot threat attractor. Read a data sheet here.
At this point Veeam customers had three choices for an on-premises, purpose-built backup appliance:
- Commodity X86-based HW running the Veeam Software Appliance
- Deduping backup targets from Dell (PowerProtect), HPE (StoreOnce), ExaGrid and Quantum (DXi)
- Ootbi from Object First.
It was not an ideal channel strategy. Now Veeam has started tidying things up by taking Object First in-house. It seems likely that there will be a melding operation to combine the Veeam Software Appliance and Ootbi code.
This is the latest in a series of events at Veeam, with the resignation of CTO Niraj Tolia and departure of Chief Product Officer Anton Gostev. Veeam also bought cybersecurity startup Securiti for $1.725 billion in October last year. There’s no suggestion that these all events are connected, other than in timing.
The Veeam spokesperson added: “Many customers want the simplicity of a single supplier for an out-of-the-box, immutable backup target appliance that combines hardware and software. Object First enables Veeam to offer a pre-integrated, easy-to-deploy solution that complements our existing partner ecosystem.”
“Veeam Data Cloud Vault is the fastest-growing product in Veeam’s history, because it removes complexity for customers who need a simple, secure, single-supplier experience. With Object First, we extend that same value on-premises while continuing to support an open, hardware ecosystem, allowing customers to choose simplicity, best-of-breed solutions, or a mix of both based on their needs and timelines.”
“Our strategy remains unchanged: we are software-first and partner-first, empowering customers to deploy Veeam solutions wherever and however they choose.”
There is no information available about what will happen to Object First’s staff or the acquisition cost.
