Among the news arrived from Veeam in the last days about their flagship product Backup & Replication, many of you had probably noted among all the informations that there will be a new version of the product, named Enterprise Plus. Added to Standard and Enterprise, Veeam now has a total of three editions of the backup product:
Just like has happend in the past with VMware (interesting indeed the use of the same names, or is by purpose?), the new features has been introduced all in the highest version. There is also a change in the prices, and now the official prices (in North America) are these: Standard Edition: $750/socket. Enterprise Edition: $1250/socket. Enterprise Plus Edition: $1999/socket.
This table list only the new features and how they are available in the different editions, so I do not know how are distributed the existing features, but I would say they are as in the past: the Enterprise version differs from the standard one for the vPower features and all the related tools (SureBackup, Instant VM Recovery, Virtual Lab).
For sure, each of you has already stopped by the table to think about which edition will be best for you, and if a single feature would have been better placed in a lower version (usually the feature you would like to have!). Anyway, as in many other products and vendors, software editions are sold in bundle and not as single options. And as I heard many VMware customers in the past willing to have for example only DRS but not the whole suite where DRS is included, even here maybe there will be customers using one of the supported storage, and thus interested in Storage-Assisted backups, but maybe without the need for any other feature included into the Enterprise Plus.
There are really niche features like RESTful APIs, that will for sure make many service providers really happy, but will stay unused in many other customers buying Enterprise Plus maybe only to have storage-based backups.
I’m not trying to suggest anything to Veeam’s product managers, they have really smart people there, but it would be interesting to see (from them just like from other vendors) a catalog made with the base price coming out for the bare product (that would be the standard version) and a series of options to choose like a menu, based on everyones’ needs. Many car makers do this since many years, and some software already work in this way.
This licensing method will be for sure much more difficult to manage, but I think nowadays Veeam has reached a company size where they can do this without major problems.
And you, what do you think? do you prefer an all-in-one product, or a list of options to choose?