Convergence of AI, cybersecurity, data resilience is giving Veeam’s partner ecosystem an opportunity to lead customer conversations. Together with channel partners, Michelle Graff is transforming the partner lifecycle, including partner engagement, enablement, certification, co-sell, solution development, services and expansion.
The emerging AI era demands a new generation of services, and Veeam’s partner ecosystem is at the centre of orchestrating and delivering that specialized work. Veeam’s partner ecosystem provides a foundation for helping customers adopt the new Veeam DataAI Command Platform.
Revenue will be Veeam’s lagging indicator of success, but it is not the only metric Michelle Graff, Veeam’s SVP of Global Partners and Channel, monitors regularly. While revenue will remain important, it cannot be the only measure.
Graff therefore also needs to understand whether partners are developing differentiated capabilities, reaching customers more effectively and improving the value and profitability of their practices.
Graff will focus on Veeam’s leading indicators of success – the signals that Veeam’s partners are executing on activities that drive joint customer wins and successful adoption of Veeam’s Data and AI Trust solutions. “The biggest change I want to see is partners being recognised not simply as technology suppliers, but as essential advisers and orchestrators for data resilience and trusted AI,” says Graff.
The convergence of AI, cybersecurity and data resilience gives Veeam’s ecosystem an opportunity to lead some of the most important customer conversations of this generation.
Together with partners, Graff is examining the health of the entire partner lifecycle, including partner engagement, enablement and certification, co-selling activity, opportunity progression, solution development, services attachment, expansion within existing customers and recurring revenue.
The true measure of progress will be whether Veeam’s strategy creates better customer outcomes and sustainable mutual growth. Veeam will listen, simplify engagement and work to turn its strategy into meaningful opportunities that partners can build on.
When Veeam and partners combine strengths, resilient and trusted data becomes a genuine business advantage. Looking ahead Graff says, “My commitment is that partners will remain central to how Veeam innovates, sells and creates customer value.”
We will judge every development by the value it creates for partners and programme activity alone is not a measure of success.
Immediate priorities
Amongst Graff’s priorities, the first is investing in partners’ ability to deliver services and solutions that expand Veeam’s footprint across customers, delivering a platform that can protect, secure, govern, and recover an organisation’s critical data.
Graff’s second priority is capturing the opportunity for Veeam’s partners – resellers, distributors, service providers and system integrators alike to double or triple their total addressable market with Veeam. This will happen by opening new use cases across data protection, cloud resiliency, and data and AI security.
Graff’s third priority is unifying Veeam’s partner ecosystem to deliver joint offerings that unlock greater customer outcomes and faster time to value.
Veeam’s new competencies and programmes will help partners build and orchestrate solutions for customers across Veeam’s hyperscaler, technology alliance, and services partnerships. Across all three priorities, the objective is to create greater partner advantage, helping Veeam’s ecosystem build differentiated, profitable, and sustainable businesses with the vendor.
These three priorities also mean delivering the partner enablement needed to build capabilities in new areas, backed by programmes and incentives that reward and support them as they grow into new customer opportunities.
The entire partner journey, from onboarding and enablement through opportunity development, deal registration, co-selling and customer expansion is being reviewed. At every stage, the question is whether the experience is clear, consistent and useful for the partner.
One practical development is the creation of a more unified ecosystem experience through the ProPartner Network. This includes bringing Securiti AI partners into the Veeam partner environment so they can register opportunities and access relevant content and resources in one place.
Veeam is also reviewing how enablement, playbooks, customer insight and access to expertise can become more useful and actionable for partners.
My commitment is that partners will remain central to how Veeam innovates, sells and creates customer value.
Balancing global and local
A strong global strategy gives partners clarity and consistency, but it must also accommodate the different ways customers buy and partners operate in each market.
“My approach is to establish common principles, programmes and outcomes globally, while empowering regional teams to apply them in a way that reflects local market conditions,” says Graff.
In the Middle East and Africa, this means listening closely to distributors, resellers, service providers, alliances and customers. It also means recognising differences in market maturity, cloud adoption, skills availability, regulation and data sovereignty requirements.
“Global consistency should remove complexity and friction. It should never remove local judgment, relevance or the ability to respond to customers,” emphasises Graff. “My vision is for Veeam’s Middle East and Africa ecosystem to help lead the transition from traditional data protection to data resilience and Data and AI Trust.”
The region includes ambitious organisations accelerating their adoption of cloud and AI, alongside customers navigating evolving regulatory, sovereignty and skills requirements. This creates an important role for local partners with the relationships, market knowledge and technical capability to turn strategy into customer outcomes.
Partners in the Middle East and Africa can build managed services around data discovery and classification, resilience monitoring, protection validation, retention risk reporting, compliance readiness, investigation of AI agent activity and precision recovery. They can combine these capabilities with existing Backup as a Service or Microsoft 365 services to create premium service levels and deeper recurring customer relationships.
The opportunity is to move beyond simply managing backup activity and help customers understand, govern and strengthen resilience of data used by people, applications and AI. Another focus is to help partners build repeatable services around resilience, cyber readiness, governance and AI readiness.
The biggest change I want to see is partners being recognised not as technology suppliers but as advisers for data resilience.
Partner programme initiatives
Veeam’s ProPartner Network is central to creating a unified ecosystem across resellers, distributors, service providers, global systems integrators and alliance partners.
Partners should expect continuing development in competencies and investments aligned with expanding their total addressable market with Veeam and footprint across customers. This would be in addition to new enablement, opportunity insight, programme resources and access to Veeam’s expanding Data and AI Trust portfolio.
Veeam is also bringing Securiti AI partners into the ProPartner Network, allowing those partners to register opportunities and access content and materials through the Veeam ecosystem.
“We will judge every development by the value it creates for partners. That means easier engagement, faster enablement, more productive customer conversations, greater services opportunity and stronger business outcomes. Programme activity alone is not a measure of success,” says Graff.
The greatest opportunity for partners to move into high-value engagements is to combine Veeam technology with their own expertise, services and intellectual property. This can include pre- and post-sales assessments, architecture, implementation, managed data protection, compliance readiness, AI governance reviews, data intelligence and ongoing resilience services.
Veeam’s expanding portfolio gives partners more ways to participate throughout the customer lifecycle, rather than only at the point of product purchase.
Veeam’s Intelligent ResOps for Microsoft 365, for example, creates opportunities around data classification, protection validation, investigation, AI readiness and managed services. Veeam Intelligent ResOps connects contextual intelligence about Microsoft 365 data with protection and recovery.
This helps partners build differentiation, deepen customer relationships and create more predictable recurring revenue.
Veeam’s focus is to connect enablement directly to real customer and sales opportunities in a meaningful way. Veeam is soon launching broader, no-cost training that enables partners to expand across multiple practices without being limited by previously paid subscriptions.
“We also want account planning and co-selling to become consistent, with clearer alignment between Veeam sellers and partner teams,” says Graff.
Partners need relevant learning, concise commercial and technical content, practical sales plays and access to Veeam expertise. The ProPartner environment provides training, toolkits and sales resources, while initiatives such as Command the Expand add customer insight, scenario-based guidance and ready-to-use messaging.
“The objective is not simply to provide more content. It is to give partners the right insight, expertise and support at the point where it can progress a customer conversation and create value,” adds Graff.
Veeam is reviewing how enablement, playbooks, customer insight and access to expertise can become useful for partners.
Measuring and driving partner success
Graff explains: “Sales volume is one indicator, but it does not provide a complete view of partner success. We also need to consider recurring revenue, services attachment, customer expansion, retention, sales productivity and the ability to create repeatable offerings. We should assess whether Veeam’s programmes are helping partners to identify opportunities more effectively, differentiate their businesses and deepen their position as trusted advisers.”
Command the Expand, for example, is designed to support growth in total contract value and monthly recurring revenue. Sustainable profitability, however, also depends on partners being able to add their own expertise, services and intellectual property. Command the Expand helps identify, upgrade and attachment opportunities and provides guidance that partners and Veeam sellers can use in customer conversations.
Current scenarios include Veeam Data Platform edition upgrades, attaching Veeam Vault, moving Microsoft 365 protection to Veeam Data Cloud and adding Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365 to existing Veeam Data Platform customers.
Partners can access a playbook, customer conversation guidance, training, pitch materials and the Customer Expansion Portal. The portal uses account insight to help partners identify relevant opportunities and prioritise customer engagement.
The purpose is to identify where an expanded Veeam footprint can improve resilience, compliance or cloud capability while creating additional value for the customer and partner. Greater co-sell velocity begins with shared focus. Veeam and Veeam’s partners need to agree which customer challenges Veeam is addressing, which accounts present the strongest opportunities and what each organisation will contribute.
Veeam is supporting this through structured joint pursuit motions, account planning, clearer customer scenarios, expansion insight and partner-ready playbooks.
“We also need ownership and access to the right sales and technical expertise. Better collaboration should shorten the distance between identifying an opportunity, engaging the customer and delivering an outcome,” says Graff.
Veeam’s ecosystem is strongest when partners can differentiate through their own capabilities and service models rather than competing solely on a product transaction. Graff’s early moves are helping Veeam’s global and local partners to move in new and high value directions.
Key takeaways for partners
- At every stage, the question is whether the experience is clear, consistent and useful for the partner.
- A strong global strategy gives partners clarity and consistency, but it must accommodate different ways customers buy in each market.
- Global consistency should remove complexity and friction but should never remove local judgment, relevance or ability to respond to customers.
- The opportunity is to move beyond managing backup and help customers understand, govern, strengthen resilience of data.
- The greatest opportunity for partners to move into high-value engagements is to combine Veeam technology with their own expertise.
- Greater co-sell velocity begins with shared focus.
- Veeam and partners need to agree which customer challenges Veeam is addressing and what each organisation will contribute.
- Veeam’s ecosystem is strongest when partners can differentiate through their capabilities rather than a product transaction.
Executive insights
Describe your job role in the business?
As Senior Vice President of Global Partners and Channel, I lead the strategy and execution of that ecosystem. My role is to create greater partner advantage, simplify engagement, improve consistency across routes to market and help partners expand their services and solutions around data resilience, cyber readiness and trusted data for AI.
My role requires ecosystem strategy, commercial judgement, operational discipline and a detailed understanding of partner business models.
What are the opportunities and challenges for channel businesses in today’s era of digital and AI platforms?
Partners can build advisory, implementation and managed services around data discovery, classification, access, compliance, AI readiness and recovery.
The challenge is that technology and risk are evolving rapidly, while many customers have fragmented controls and limited visibility across their data estates.
Partners must continue developing their skills and avoid treating AI as a standalone technology sale. Those able to bring data, identity, security, resilience and AI into one business conversation can become indispensable advisers and create higher value, recurring customer relationships.
What are the core competencies and leadership skills required for successful channel businesses today?
Successful channel leadership requires clarity, curiosity, empathy and disciplined execution. Leaders need to understand partner economics, customer outcomes and the technology shifts reshaping the market. They must convert strategy into programmes that sellers and partners can use, align teams around shared priorities and measure whether those programmes create genuine value. Listening is equally important. Partners often see changes in customer demand early, so effective ecosystems are built through continuous dialogue.
How should a channel partner engage with a vendor partner for a mutually beneficial, long-term partnership?
The strongest partnerships begin with shared outcomes rather than short-term transactions. A channel partner should be clear about their target customers, capabilities, service model and growth ambitions, then work with the vendor to agree where both businesses can create distinctive value.
This should include joint account planning, honest pipeline discussions, relevant enablement, clear ownership and regular reviews of progress. Both parties must invest and remain accountable. Partners should also challenge vendors constructively and share customer insight.
What are your recommendations for channel partners to succeed in today’s competitive market?
Partners should develop specialist capabilities around clearly defined customer problems instead of relying only on broad technology resale. They should build services and intellectual property around the products they offer, creating differentiation and recurring revenue. Continued investment in data, security, cloud, governance and AI skills is essential because these disciplines converge.
Partners should also use customer insight to prioritise opportunities rather than relying solely on broad campaigns. Competitive advantage comes from understanding change early, staying close to customers and vendors, and acting with focus.
What skills does your role require today, and how is this likely to change in the near term?
As AI reshapes customer priorities, channel leaders will need greater fluency across data governance, cybersecurity, identity, compliance and resilience.
Data literacy will become increasingly important because we must understand not only revenue, but also partner engagement, customer expansion and service economics.
