Jason Buffington .com

I am admittedly biased in favor of the Kyndryl and Veeam Software partnership announced today:

• Not just because I work for Veeam
• Not just because I’m a fan of the Kyndryl leadership team or their offerings
• But because I have always appreciated the expertise-centric mindset of the Kyndryl Recovery Services teams from way back when they were part of IBM

To be clear, I’m not referring to Kyndryl’s spinoff from IBM Cloud. Rather, to the 20+ year pedigree of IBM Business Continuity Resiliency Services (BCRS). More than two decades ago, I first learned what real disaster preparedness ought to look like from IBM BCRS when I was studying to become a Certified Business Continuity Planner (CBCP). That certification from the Disaster Recovery Institute and the curriculum that BCRS taught and delivered to their customers points out that most of the crises that an organization will suffer have very little to do with just IT systems. The mindset that they instilled back then still benefits their customers today by consistently ensuring an understanding around the business processes that depend on IT —and conveying the importance of implementing technologies that enable those business processes to be resilient.

Fast forward 20 years and the focus has shifted from regional weather/power crises to cyberattacks and ransomware. While any of those calamities are existential threats to organizations that suffer them, cyber events are unfortunately far more inevitable than fires or floods. Simply put, a ransomware event truly is a ‘WHEN’ not an ‘IF’ unlike the regional crises of yesteryear.

Back then, the primary expertise needed to survive a crisis was simply an understanding of business processes and IT operations. Today, an entirely additional facet of IT security knowledge — one that includes both prevention and remediation expertise — is also necessary to ensure that business processes can remain resilient — and THAT is what Kyndryl brings to their customer base: expertise.

Notice that I have not mentioned ‘backup’ yet? The unfortunate reality is that even with formidable expertise and proper planning, the wrong user will invariably click on the wrong e-mail, thereby letting in the wrong villain. At that point, backups and replicas that are assured to be “clean” and rigorously “tested to be recoverable” by quickly orchestrated and well-documented processes become the organization’s only hope. As such, doubling down and expanding on the long relationship that Kyndryl/IBM have had with Veeam is an exciting and game-changing industry partnership that will ensure that customers who rely on Kyndryl expertise can be confident in knowing that those experts are ready with Veeam-powered backups, replicas, and secondary infrastructure to support those customers on their worst days.

To wrap up my closing thoughts on this power-packed partnership:

• Expertise matters
• Protection of modern workloads that are assuredly recoverable matters
• THAT’s why the expansion of this partnership matters so much

Congrats to Kyndryl, Veeam, their partner ecosystems, and the customers that they serve.

Originally posted on LinkedIn.