Veeam has expanded its Cloud Connect offering to include the ability for service providers to offer disaster recovery-as-a-service.

Veeam says Cloud Connect will be extended later this year to include advanced image-based virtual machine replication capabilities as part of the new Veeam Availability Suite v9.

The extended functionality also gives service providers the ability to provide customers with cloud-based disaster recovery-as-a-service with the new Cloud Connect Replication for Service Providers offering.

Chris Thorpe, CodeBlue virtual CIO, says the expansion to allow for offsite replication is welcome news.

“Enabling seamless DRaaS is an excellent addition to Veeam Cloud Connect.

“It will immediately enhance our own backup and data recovery offerings, allowing us to offer our customers an extension to the cloud backup option already in place,” Thorpe says.

He says the service, in conjunction with CodeBlue's own virtual private server offering, will enable the IT managed service provider to stand customers back up in the cloud ‘almost instantaneously, no matter what happens'.

Veeam has 140 registered Cloud Provider partners in New Zealand.

Cloud Connect was introduced in Veeam's Availability Suite v8, enabling customers to extend their backup infrastructure to the cloud for offsite backups.

Veeam Cloud Connect Replication for Service Providers is a separately licensed product, allowing service providers to add increased revenue opportunities through selling DRaaS to new and existing customers.

In announcing the product, Veeam again pushed that it doesn't operate its own cloud or offer its own DRaaS to customers, instead relying on partners to do so.

“[So] service providers face zero competition from Veeam,” the company says.

Meanwhile Veeam Cloud Connect with replication as part of the new Veeam Availability Suite v9, will provide customers with a fully integrated  means to create replicas in the cloud, enabling protection of mission-critical applications with improved recovery time objectives, Veeam says.

The vendor says the offering removes the requirement for customers to build and maintain a disaster recovery site for offsite protection, offloading ‘a tremendous amount' of cost and complexity from their IT infrastructure.