As many of you have already heard, last week marks a historical moment for me and many of my colleagues at Veeam > Insight Partners to Acquire Veeam for US$5 Billion

First, to answer the question I received hundreds of times in the last few days – no, I'm not leaving Veeam! I shall remain here in the foreseeable future, for as long as I can keep enjoying my job as much as I have been so far. Which in turn requires that I'm able to do what I think is right for my customers and partners. And, knowing much more about this acquisition than the official announcement says, I'm confident this will be possible for years to come. I wouldn't be so sure if Veeam was acquired by a competitor, when many changes and much disruption are to be expected – I've been through this before. However, being acquired by an investment firm is quite different, as our company HAS to remain as is – there are simply no other options. And while something had to happen eventually – I mean, our co-founders were not getting younger – but such acquisition, I could not even hope for!

Obviously, acquisitions are a hyper-sensitive topic for anyone who has spent any decent amount of time in IT. And just as I expected, the news resulted in quite a turmoil across various IT communities last week, with many posters being extremely negative about the announcement and some even already "looking for Veeam alternatives" just based on the news! While it was very painful for me to read through, I didn't even attempt to address those comments as I usually strive to do, because I realize I can't change the perception. Which is that acquisitions never end well for acquired companies and their customers, and even if there are plenty of examples proving that the opposite happens too – perception is reality.

So, I won't waste your time assuring you there will be no changes – of course there will be some, both in short-term and long-term. This would have been the case regardless of the acquisition – as change has always been the only constant here at Veeam. So, the only real question to answer is whether those changes will be net positive, or net negative to our customers and partners? Unfortunately, answering this question requires establishing the baseline: knowing where Veeam is now, our current challenges, where we would be headed without this acquisition, and what new opportunities and markets this acquisition opens up. But, since almost all related information is not public, this makes it impossible for me to present you the bigger picture. So, if you felt like our press release consists of mostly cliché phrases – it was "by design" and now you know why (besides, no one likes long press releases anyway). What I can do here however, is elaborate on some public facts about Insight itself, which will hopefully alleviate the majority of concerns.

The #1 concern has been about the future of Veeam. Most people seem to assume that investment firms focus on "sunset phase" companies with their acquisitions. Indeed, many do: they buy already struggling vendors who are looking to sell due to being out of money, reduce their operating costs to the minimum, jack up prices, start doing license usage audits on customers and so on – doing everything to squeeze the remaining money out of the existing install base to both cover the acquisition costs, and make some profit on top of it. This of course kills the acquired company eventually, but who cares when the company was already a walking dead?

To state the obvious: Veeam is NOT a struggling company that had to sell off due to running out of money. We have been profitable for the past 10 years, with continuous double-digit revenue growth since inception, and we are the market leader – which you can see reflected in the sale price. So, why would Insight buy Veeam? Because they are fairly unique firm in that they focus on acquiring growth phase companies. As opposed to the above approach, Insight buys fast growing and/or market leading companies with the goal to further accelerate their growth through opening access to new markets, enhancing their product offerings with relevant acquisitions, and finding synergies with other companies in their extremely large portfolio. This has been a winning strategy for them, and what made them the biggest IT investment firm in the world. And I'm very much looking forward to be a able to leverage what Insight has to offer for the benefit of our customers and partners.

Another concern I heard is regarding a potential impact on our product strategy. This is an easier one to address, as this is exactly why I love the fact we weren't bought by another software company, or worse yet a competitor. No matter how sharp Insight folks are, they're not in the backup business – they're investors. So, they'll never come telling us what to do, pretending they know backup (and our customers) better than us. But, being Veeam investors since 2013, they do know our company extremely well - and even already helped us do the right changes before. I personally know Michael Triplett for over 5 year, and he's been on our Board for a while now, attending all executive meetings and learning what Veeam is about. So, he knows our strengths and values very well, and understands the best thing Insight can do is leave us be doing what we do best – while helping to improve on our weaknesses using unique expertise and experience Insight has to offer. In the end, as growth phase investors, their one and only goal is to keep increasing Veeam's value, which in turn requires nurturing further growth – and is impossible without continuous innovation and maintaining high customer satisfaction.

Finally, I wanted to provide answers to top 3 concerns I heard over the last few days. Disclaimers: this is my personal outlook for the foreseeable future (about 3 years is as far as I can see), which assumes "business as usual" attitude from our customer base too - as I can't predict what will happen if too many customers will freak out and decide to dump Veeam just because we were acquired.

• R&D and Support. I expect investments into R&D and in-house Support to be accelerated immediately. Michael likes to repeat that in all of their time in business, Insight never saw another software company who had customers speaking so highly and favorably about the quality of product and support. So, they clearly understand that these two groups are the biggest asset they have acquired, and that they are most critical to further growth.

• Prices. I expect Perpetual Socket price will continue to raise due to continuous VM density growth (this is something I blogged about before this acquisition was a thing). I don't expect Subscription VUL price to change outside of small tweaks may be, as in my mind the current price is in the perfect spot with latest changes in October 2019. And I expect Rental MSP prices to be reduced slightly, as we still need to get them in line with the recent reduction of the Subscription price.

• Community Edition. If anything, acquisition should be a good thing for this offering. Because there has not been one Veeam exec meeting in 2019 where attempts were not made to shut the CE down, due to noticeable impact on SMB revenue comparing to previous years. It's a typical conflict of the strategic goal with the immediate tactical goal (sales in the given quarter), so this push back is quite understandable. However, since sustainable long-term Veeam growth is the biggest priority for Insight, the acquisition should tip the scales in the CE favor.

I kept thinking on how to finish this off, and I guess I'll just ask you all for something very small – and that is to continue your trust into regular people of Veeam. We never let you down before – and we remain the same exact people, who still proudly carry the same flag and bleed veeam-green. We truly love what we do! And from my side, I do promise to remain open and honest with all of you no matter what.