Veeam helps customers worldwide keep their data safe and restore it quickly in the event of disasters. The company provides a core building block for secure IT. That sets a high bar for Nathan Kurtz, who himself serves as the company’s CIO.
You can recover your IT systems, you can restore servers, but data that’s lost is gone. It’s Veeam’s mission to prevent that. The company specializes in backup and data resiliency. Veeam ensures organizations can create backups that are not only resistant to ransomware but also quickly available when disaster does strike.
In a nutshell, Veeam delivers backup and recovery solutions with minimal downtime as the last line of defense. The company supports more than 550,000 organizations worldwide and operates in 30 countries with around 5,500 people. CIO Nathan Kurtz is responsible for internal IT.
ITdaily: “What does the IT environment you’re responsible for look like?”
Nathan Kurtz: “My team and I manage all internal systems. That ranges from network and infrastructure to end-user systems like laptops, as well as the IT in meeting rooms. We also look after the systems for product development and the demo environments sales works in. We do that for the global organization.”
That means I’m responsible for a global network with roughly 10,000 endpoints and more than 200 applications running across every part of the business. The IT department touches every team and every person in the organization, from managers and sales to developers and accounting.
What are your main priorities at the moment?
Kurtz: “I follow a fairly standard framework. IT has to align with the company’s objectives. For that I work with a few priority tiers. Security is always at the top, along with availability and compliance. If those things aren’t right, nothing else matters. A security issue stops everything—not just internally but for customers too. Our commitment to them is precisely that we keep their data safe.”
“At the next level I look at what we can do to support our product. Beyond that, there’s a strong focus on improving internal operations. Together we’re trying to do more with less. Often that comes down to designing better processes and standardizing across our global locations. Only then do the IT systems that support that follow.”
“Too often IT gets asked for a new solution or system, but I never just go along with that. Maybe no new system is needed; maybe the problem is that four regions are tackling the same issue differently. Streamlining and simplifying to a global standard is the solution. Simpler systems are also easier to maintain, which saves us time.”
Does the rest of Veeam sufficiently understand those priorities? Is everyone on the same page?
Kurtz: “Veeam operates with consistent priorities, clearly defined from the highest level down to the operational departments. Everyone has a clear picture of what needs to be done.”
“A large part of my job is to accommodate requests from the business side. If it’s something we can do, we need to be very clear about the timing. People don’t like to hear no, but you can clearly indicate that something doesn’t fit now, and say when it will happen.”
Does the IT department have access to enough people and resources to successfully complete the challenges?
Kurtz: “Probably not (laughs). But that’s not a bad thing. I have a limited number of people to work with. Due to a limitation in resources, we have to choose priorities. Without restrictions, everything suddenly becomes a possibility, with limited resources we have to be hypercritical. That’s a positive thing.”
“Finding talent is always a challenge. Veeam is looking for people with deep technical expertise, but attaches enormous importance to the company culture and values. We only hire people who fit in. As a result, it sometimes takes a little longer to fill vacancies.”
People who come straight from university have new and fresh ideas.
Nathan Kurtz, CIO Veeam
“From IT, I am increasingly focusing on recruiting people early in their careers. People who come straight from university have new and fresh ideas. We can learn a lot from them.”
Is the future of Veeam’s IT environment in the cloud, on-premises, or a combination of both?
Kurtz: “Option C! I don’t believe that everything should be either in the cloud or on-prem. I always start from the business and look for the right approach. Veeam runs on a multi-cloud environment with all the major providers, we purchase services from the main SaaS specialists and retain capabilities on-premises.”
“Veeam’s product also protects all those workloads, from cloud and SaaS to on-prem. We have to have all those environments ourselves. We ourselves are investing heavily in SaaS because of the limited overhead. Several applications run in the public cloud, where we also purchase storage. I wouldn’t call that combination really complex anymore. The hybrid multi-cloud has become part of the standard operational practice. Teams are used to managing such an environment.”
What impact do regulations like NIS2 and DORA have on IT policy?
Kurtz: “Such regulations do have an impact on what we do. We are not always subject to the rules, but we do bake them in. Certainly with regard to cyber resilience in relation to data. We drink our own champagne: our product helps us to meet the requirements of those European rules.”
How Does Veeam Deal with the AI Hype?
Kurtz: “We strongly embrace AI, but I think we are proceeding very intentionally. We don’t jump on every opportunity, but we do think about it. We have already introduced global capabilities from major providers. Everyone has received Copilot and it is expected that everyone will use it. Veeam supports employees with sessions and training on how AI can help in daily work.”
“We are also reworking our own systems and improving data quality. Once that is complete, we will integrate AI agents that can autonomously resolve simple cases. SaaS providers are currently rolling out solutions to help with this.”
“I wouldn’t say we’re going all-in with AI, but I strongly believe that AI has an important role to play. However, not every idea with AI is good. There must be a clear business goal of AI implementation, with a strong return of investment.”
Which important trends are you following with an eye on the next three years?
Kurtz: “I am hyper-focused on data. There are more and more rules and people have high expectations about how we handle their data. Protecting it to the highest possible standard and treating it like our own data is very important.”
“I am also looking at AI and operational efficiency, of course. Sovereignty also plays a major role. More and more, customers want data to remain in a specific region.”
“Ultimately, however, everything comes back to culture and people. There are many new trends and everything changes quickly, but extreme change is a constant in the world of tech.”