Veeam Software has announced accelerated company success in the enterprise and midmarket segments in EMEA since the beginning of 2014, proving more enterprises are demanding solutions that enable the always-on business.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, GAME, OEDIV Oetker Daten- und Informationsverarbeitung KG, SCOTT Sports, and REHAU AG + Co are just a few of Veeam‘s new enterprise customers this year.

Veeam closed Q1 2014 with 150% year-over-year growth of new enterprise customers in EMEA, while growth of midmarket customers grew 82% over the same period last year. In addition, year-over-year growth of the number of enterprise deals closed in Q1’2014 compared to Q1’2013 grew 105%, while midmarket closed deals increased 72%.

“Our partners are experiencing an increase in the demand for the always-on business,” says Daniel Fried, senior vice-president and MD for EMEA at Veeam.

“Veeam’s capabilities in data centre availability combined with virtualisation, the cloud, and other enabling technologies, completes the modern data centre and ensures that the critical applications of our more than 100 000 customers remain always on from any place, at any time, on any device.

“If partners aren’t selling Veeam, they are at a competitive disadvantage. So many enterprise and mid-size companies which are highly virtualised are looking for a solution such as Veeam to protect the data in their modern data centres.

“Our growth in the enterprise and midmarket segments in EMEA is a testament to our recent VMCE certification programme,” continues Fried.

“It was specifically designed so that our partners are able to meet and exceed these new expectations of their enterprise customers, offering training that will enable the reseller to offer and deliver high quality professional services, further enabling the customer to optimise their investment in Veeam solutions for a much higher ROI and improved SLAs.”

Launched in January 2014, the Veeam Certified Engineer (VMCE) certification programmes in EMEA were created to establish a more empowered and enabled channel and end-user ecosystem. The designation of VMCE establishes a level of expertise required to implement and configure Veeam software correctly and most effectively.

This new certification program is designed to support the systems engineers of Veeam customers, as well as the pre-sales engineers of Veeam’s network of ProPartners, with high-level technical competencies through delivery of technical courses required to achieve VMCE certification.

“I found the VMCE course to be extremely insightful,” says Craig Braimley, infrastructure architect at Mirus IT Solutions, a Veeam Gold ProPartner and Gold Cloud Provider.

“What impressed me the most was the many interactive labs which enabled me to test out my new Veeam skills in a range of simulated environments. I would definitely recommend anyone looking to improve their Veeam skills to take the Veeam Backup & Replication v8 course, as I now feel confident that I have the skillset to not only design, but install, configure and troubleshoot any Veeam product.”

Every VMCE class includes both lecture and hands-on elements that allow the students to learn about the technology and its configuration, and then experience the configuration in labs based on real-world customer scenarios. All VMCE candidates must pass a proctored exam as the final step in earning their certification. Veeam expects 1 000 to 2 000 engineers to earn the VMCE distinction within this year.

“I would highly recommend the VMCE course as it provides extensive labs for valuable hands-on experience and a highly trained instructor to walk through the best practices and theory required to configure Veeam to meet different requirements,” says Nicholas Dalby, technical consultant at Sofcat, a Veeam Platinum ProPartner.