Veeam 7 Ent or Ent Plus? whats the difference!

[TordeK]

Just wondering if anyone knows what the difference is going to be between enterprise and enterprise plus in the new Veeam v7 ?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Adam,

All information on feature list for different editions of Veeam B&R v7 will be available closer to the release date.

Thanks!

[TordeK]

Thanks for that

Also wondering if there will be an upgrade path from 6.5 ent to 7 ent plus or would all current 6.5 ent users get a free upgrade to 7 ent plus seeing as new users get the free upgrade?

[kjc3303]

Free upgrade for insisting enterprise users

[Vitaliy S.]

Yes, there will be an upgrade path. Moreover, there will be free upgrade path to Veeam B&R Enterprise plus. See this topic for further reading: So... Anyone know what the last two new features are?

[TordeK]

I'm slippin, thanks for pointing that out

[AJ83]

Free upgrade, but beware of the higher maintenance!

[Gostev]

I am pretty sure the document exists, since I provided feedback on it couple of weeks ago... but I could not find it quickly. I have sent a query into our marketing, meanwhile please refer to the table in this blog post > The awesome Veeam B&R v7: Licensing and Joep’s Stance

By the way, this post was featured in the last week's forum digest

[johnlong]

So backup from storage snapshots is an Enterprise Plus feature only along with wan acceleration?

That makes me feel bad. I have a p4000 vsa and I was hoping to use backup from storage snapshots. I have veeam essentials plus and it's a shame there isn't a way to obtain these features without upgrading my licenses to enterprise plus.

[johnlong]

...meanwhile please refer to the table in this blog post > The awesome Veeam B&R v7: Licensing and Joep’s Stance

By the way, this post was featured in the last week's forum digest

Here is a comment from the blog I thought was worth echoing here.

Rick Miller

WAN acceleration is only included in the Enterprise Plus Edition?

That’s a bit surprising since it would be extremely beneficial to the smaller shops who tend to have less internet bandwidth and IT budgets. Companies of all sizes need to have their data off site to protect the business.

I hope I’m not seeing a trend, but with the recent price hikes and feature exclusions in the lower editions it’s not looking good. Veeam may be on it’s way to pricing their product out of reach of the smaller shops.

Maybe someone could explain why WAN acceleration was excluded from the lower editions?

[dellock6]

There would always be requests to have one feature out of a hundred ones into the lower edition of any product, usually the one each of us needs for his own environment: it could be the wan acceleration ,san snapshots backup, tape seupport, whatever.
I'm not defending Veeam, but since they choose to bundle several features in few editions, it's a natural step the most advanced ones will always be included in the highest edition.
The other way around would be to have a base product (like the standard edition) and then a list of optional features to be paid one by one once customer choose which ones he wants. It could be an option...

Luca.

[johnlong]

I'm willing to pay for new features. I'm just not willing to make the jump from Essentials Plus to Enterprise Plus.

Why couldn't Veeam offer Essentials Standard and Essentials Plus?

[barrnunn]

Customers that own Veeam Essentials Enterprise Bundle with active maintenance won't be eligible for "Enterprise Plus" features of V7? That would be more than a bit disappointing.

[razorvines]

Customers that own Veeam Essentials Enterprise Bundle with active maintenance won't be eligible for "Enterprise Plus" features of V7? That would be more than a bit disappointing.

I agree completely! The majority of my customers have Essentials bundles and wont ever need more then 6 sockets to license. So why exclude them from the best features, or hit them over the head with a double upgrade fee to get the features? Doesn't make much sense to me.

[Gostev]

Thank you for your feedback, I will discuss this with top management. To make sure this makes sense though, you have to understand that we are not making much money selling Essentials, because it is such a heavily discounted product. Contrary to popular belief, our margin is nowhere near that from selling drugs or weapons

Now, making even more features available as a part of Essentials offering will only further increase our support costs (Enterprise Plus features are pretty complex). Considering the laughable yearly maintenance fee for Essentials (calculated off very low MSRP), it should be clear that generally speaking, instead of making money, we will be losing money over this (and will be doing this for years because majority of your customers "wont ever need more then 6 sockets to license"). So, my guess is these were purely business considerations.

As a Veeam partner, I am sure you are least interested of us going out of business. We must stay profitable and be able to continue investing aggressively into R&D to continue our innovation in the field of backup and recovery.

[barrnunn]

As a Veeam customer, I understand that Veeam needs to make money to stay in business and that is in my best interest as well, but does that come at the cost of stripping features from pre-paid maintenance customers who thought all the new V7 features were going to be available to them until this last minute announcement?

There are/were 2 versions of Essentials; Standard and Enterprise. It seems strange that you wouldn't provide all the new features to Essentials Enterprise and not to the Essentials Standard if you were going to make a dividing line somewhere. I don't follow the logic that by not adding the new features for Essentials customers that Veeam would save substantial support costs. Most of the additional support costs for the new features of v7 will need to happen anyway just to support Enterprise customers. Why not raise the maintenance cost for Essentials going forward if it truly is too low?

If you are looking for a way to lose your current Essentials customers, and/or any future support costs, since they will not get new features as previously led to believe they would, then this decision pretty much seals that.

[Gostev]

does that come at the cost of stripping features from pre-paid maintenance customers

That is an incorrect statement... I have no idea where you got this from.
1. Not a single existing feature will be "stripped" as a part of v6 > v7 upgrade of any Veeam Essentials bundle..
2. Every existing Essentials customer will get about 60 new features and enhancements as a part of v6 > v7 upgrade at no cost.

If you are looking for a way to lose your current Essentials customers

Any Veeam Essentials 6.x customer who is happy with the product now, will be even more happy after they upgrade to Veeam Essentials 7.0, because they will get access to so much more functionality (and for free). For example, on top of features already announced, some engine enhancements we have not announced yet are pretty game-changing. So, I don't really follow your logic, sorry.

We do understand that some Essentials customers will want to upgrade to full product to also get access to Enterprise Plus edition functionality, and we are looking at providing discounted upgrade path from Essentials. So, no one will be left unhappy.

[BB1]

Free upgrade, but beware of the higher maintenance!

Has anyone found any indicative pricing for the new Maintenance costs for each version?

[hannisch]

How much makes the differance in maintanace, between Enterprise and Enterprise Plus per socket. I have a valid Enterprise subscription, so I have to choose which Edition I would like to have. Beside the new functions the pricing is an important factor, too.

[barrnunn]

That is an incorrect statement... I have no idea where you got this from.
1. Not a single existing feature will be "stripped" as a part of v6 > v7 upgrade of any Veeam Essentials bundle..
2. Every existing Essentials customer will get about 60 new features and enhancements as a part of v6 > v7 upgrade at no cost.

1. I think you know that I meant "stripping features" was in reference to new V7 announced features of WAN Acceleration and Direct from SAN and not existing features. My entire statement was based on new V7 features that at the last minute Veeam announced would only be available in Enterprise Plus which would be a free migration for existing Enterprise customers, but not Essentials Enterprise customers. You have intentionally distorted my post to skirt the real issue.
2. Yes, just as will all other existing Veeam B&R customers. The fact remains that Veeam is withholding 2 select new features unless the customer decides to pay an upgrade fee to a newly created product offering.

Any Veeam Essentials 6.x customer who is happy with the product now, will be even more happy after they upgrade to Veeam Essentials 7.0, because they will get access to so much more functionality (and for free). For example, on top of features already announced, some engine enhancements we have not announced yet are pretty game-changing. So, I don't really follow your logic, sorry.

1. And at the same time have to do without WAN Acceleration and Direct SAN Backup features that appeared to be part of the new V7 enhancements until Veeam decided to make them "Enterprise Plus" only features.

We do understand that some Essentials customers will want to upgrade to full product to also get access to Enterprise Plus edition functionality, and we are looking at providing discounted upgrade path from Essentials. So, no one will be left unhappy.

1. I disagree that "no one will be left unhappy". Being unhappy with the product and being unhappy with deliberate steps taken by a company to withold new features to a product are two different things. I have never stated any unhappiness with the product, and to the contrary have made several posts touting the product, even though I have several outstanding support issues. Several new key V7 features are being witheld (not stripped) from existing and future Essentials customers even though they are on maintenance unless they decide to spend more money on the product they already have. Had the direction to spin off key new features and create a new product offering with those exclusive features been put forth prior to all the V7 enhancements and features, it would have been more acceptable. To wait until the very end of new V7 features and enhancements being announced and launching a new product offering as the only way to obtain the final 2 new features was not acceptable, and speaks volumes to your business practices.

[Gostev]

Sven, I believe yearly maintenance fee is about 20% of MSRP (but it is best to check on the exact amount with our sales). The MSRP prices can be found in the press release announcing v7 and Enterprise Plus edition.

Barrnunn, thank you for your feedback. I did not distort a single word in your post. "Strip-off" has a very clear meaning in English language, and that is "to remove what was there before". This is exactly the word I would use if we were to *remove* some existing features from Veeam Essentials as a part of v7 upgrade, which is not the case, so it is completely incorrect to use "strip-off" in the current situation. Your proposed definition of the act will only confuse future readers, and make them spread rumors.

I don't see how announcing Enterprise Plus sooner or later changes the main issue here (which is having Veeam Essentials users to pay to get access to some of the new functionality). The real reason for announcing Enterprise Plus just now was because we could not announce that before we announce the content of that edition (and we intentionally kept the coolest 2 features secret not to give our competition a head start in copying our technologies).

I personally would definitely like to see a smoother path for Veeam Essentials customers to get access to Enterprise Plus functionality, than having to upgrade to full product. But I also see the business reasons behind not having Enterprise Plus functionality available in Veeam Essentials, which is a heavily discounted package for most basic deployments (as the name implies).

I will keep relaying all the feedback to the top management, and I hope we can work out the approach that will work for everyone.

[aporter]

We recently upgraded from Essentials Enterprise to Enterprise so it is a bit disappointing to see the new plus version with higher support costs, even though I understand the business reasons for this decision. I am very interested in several of the new features, including backup using SAN snapshots, but now will have to weigh the costs & benefits.

Although it doesn't affect me directly now, it seems like a logical solution to the Essentials Enterprise to Plus upgrade problem would be to release an Essentials Plus version with corresponding upgrade paths.

Andrew

[rfn]

I agree... an Essentials Enterprise Plus product would be logical, maybe with a "high" price so that it's ONLY the customers with the need that will consider buying it. We're very happy with our Essentials Enterprise and only use 4 sockets at the moment (after getting new and faster servers) and I can't see us grow beyond 6 sockets at anytime.

What I haven't thought of is calculating the costs if we stay at 4 sockets. Then Enterprise Plus is not THAT much.

[Gostev]

Based on all the feedback, we have decided to introduce Veeam Essentials Enterprise Plus package. Current Veeam Essentials Enterprise customers will be able to upgrade at no cost, however this will incur increased maintenance fees (calculated off MSRP of the new package). This should address increased support costs concerns.

Upgrading is optional, but customers will need to claim free upgrade until November 1st at the latest.

[patboy29]

Gostev, how to claim the free upgrade for current customers?

[foggy]

Gostev, how to claim the free upgrade for current customers?

I believe this will be available via License Management Portal in the product download area, however you can always contact your Veeam sales rep for details.

[guillermo.lozano]

Hi Gostev, are there any plans to introduce Wan Accelerators to Essentials Enterprise?

Thanks.

Based on all the feedback, we have decided to introduce Veeam Essentials Enterprise Plus package. Current Veeam Essentials Enterprise customers will be able to upgrade at no cost, however this will incur increased maintenance fees (calculated off MSRP of the new package). This should address increased support costs concerns.

Upgrading is optional, but customers will need to claim free upgrade until November 1st at the latest.

[Vitaliy S.]

Guillermo, I haven't heard anything about any changes coming in regards to the feature set of each edition.

[Gostev]

No plans.