As Amazon Web Services Inc. continues to hoover up cloud market share, “it’s the best of times and worst of times” for smaller cloud service providers, according to Matt Kalmenson (pictured), vice president of sales, cloud and service providers, North America, at Veeam Software Inc.

Veeam has an 18,000-strong partner ecosystem. “Anything that’s provided as a service really falls under our Veeam cloud and service provider business,” Kalmenson said. Veeam must keep all of those partners satisfied in a highly competitive market. It isn’t always easy, but it is possible when companies realize that even in turbulence (or because of it), they always have choice, Kalmenson added.

Veeam has announced that it will be integrating more tightly with AWS, according to Kalmenson. He spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during this year’s VeeamOn event in New Orleans, Louisiana. (* Disclosure below.)

“Some of the smaller service providers might be thinking, ‘Well, what does that mean to me?'” he said.

Veeam services all of its partners, large and small, through a many-linked chain of sales and support personnel. “We have lots of service providers that have very niche businesses, so they might be rather small organizations,” Kalmenson said. Veeam might serve these though what it calls its “aggregation community” that includes managed service providers Insight and others.

Small but nimble advantage

Partnering with public clouds like AWS and Microsoft Azure does not mean Veeam is leaving its smaller partners in the lurch, Kalmenson pointed out.

Many workloads still run on premises, and hybrid and multi-cloud is growing; smaller cloud and software as a service providers can find a place in the spread, according to Kalmenson.

“They also can leverage and provide services on top of, let’s say, an AWS or an Azure,” he said. “There’s lots of flexibility and nimbleness in our program.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of VeeamOn 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for VeeamOn 2017. Neither Veeam Software Inc. nor other sponsors have editorial influence on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE