Wasabi Lands in Vegas for VeeamOn 2022!

The week of May 16th was all about Veeam and the annual VeeamOn Event at the Aria Resort and Casino. Luckily, air conditioning was in full effect, not just because it was over 100 degrees in Las Vegas that week, but because Wasabi hot cloud storage was in the house!

Wasabi came to the event with a full A-team prepared to engage all comers, whether it be Veeam employees, customers, channel partners, or other technology alliance partners. The event itself was hybrid by design with nearly 2,000 attendees in person and over 15,000 attending online.

In conjunction with the VeeamOn event, Wasabi recently launched its highly successful #ThinkBeforeYouClick campaign warning people of the dangers of email phishing and ransomware attacks. We played the funny and educational video at our booth next to a cardboard cutout of Nate, the singing and rapping IT director from the viral video. Attendees had fun taking pictures with Nate; those who posted their photos and tagged Wasabi had the chance to win $500 each day of the event.

The evening of the first day was capped off by an incredible welcome reception that featured amazing food, drinks, and entertainment. With a DJ, live violinist, and even Cirque du Soleil performers roaming the event alongside tarot card and palm reading sessions – Veeam threw one hell of a party!

Day 2 was just as exciting and featured memorable keynotes including one from Veeam’s CEO, Anand Eswaran. While still relatively new to Veeam’s top role, Eswaran shared his vision to focus on 3 main areas: Ransomware Protection, Cloud Acceleration, and Backup Modernization, all of which align perfectly with Wasabi’s value proposition.

Our resident expert on Ransomware protection and Wasabi Object Lock immutability feature, Drew Schlussel (Sr. Director Product Marketing) had a full agenda for the event starting with an interview on SiliconANGLE's theCUBE alongside Dustin Albertson (Manager, Cloud & Application Alliances – Product Management, Alliances, Veeam) which was live-streamed during VeeamOn, and can now be watched on Youtube.

Drew followed that up with a Veeam Studio Interview with Charlie Leeming, Veeam’s Head of ISC & XaaS Alliances, and even found time for a Partner Theater session: “Think Before You Click! Immutable Cloud Storage for Ransomware Protection with Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 and Veeam Backup and Replication.”

Another exciting guest speaker that followed in the afternoon was Chris Gardner, author of “the Pursuit of Happyness” (it probably sounds familiar because Will Smith played as Gardner in the movie of the same name). His “Permission to Dream” speech was inspirational as he reflected on where he’d been and how far he’s come while encouraging the audience to not accept anything less than fulfilling their dreams.

Day 2 ended with a Veeam rafflethon where they invited all their partner sponsors to the stage to give their company's pitch (done by yours truly) and also draw a ticket for our grand prize, which was an excellent pair of Beats Studio Wireless Headphones.

On the third day, the show floor was winding down by early afternoon but there were still plenty of meetings and engagements at the Wasabi booth, which meant more opportunities to continue to drive home our better-together story with Veeam.

The evening of Day 3 was all about the party as we took buses to the Vegas strip to enjoy live music and refreshments at Drai's nightclub above the Cromwell Las Vegas Hotel and Casino. The club itself was something to behold, a half DJ/half outside pool and beach club that opened up to the expansive neon views of Las Vegas after dark. You could see most of the major hotels and casinos from this vantage point and it made for a truly unique experience. Wasabi even had their own private cabana on the second floor of the venue, which allowed for prime viewing of the event. The main features were live performances by multi-Grammy-winning artists Coolio and Nelly, who performed all their major hits for a crowd that was primed and ready for fun.

Some of the most exciting news of the event, at least for Wasabi, came when Veeam was demoing Wasabi in the v12 dropdown menu, which is expected to launch in Q3, 2022! Equally important was seeing Wasabi as a key component of the VeeamOn Hands-On-Lab which had hundreds of in-person and virtual attendees.

Overall, VeeamOn 2022 was an amazing event for Wasabi with a strong show of support by Veeam executives, sales, engineering, and partners. We left the event with increased excitement around how much potential there truly is with Veeam and Wasabi in the market together. Thanks for a great time Veeam and Las Vegas – until next year!

Watch our VeeamOn recap video here!