Veeam Software has appointed Michelle Graff as Senior Vice President of Global Partners and Channel, handing her responsibility for the company's worldwide partner ecosystem across channel, service providers, distribution, resellers and alliances. The appointment, announced on 9 July 2026, places one of the data protection industry's most experienced channel executives in charge of a network of more than 35,000 partners as Veeam positions its data resilience platform around what it calls trusted data for AI.
"Partners are deeply rooted in the DNA of Veeam," said John Jester, chief revenue officer at Veeam, in the announcement. "Michelle has a proven track record of putting partners first and building high-performance ecosystems that create durable advantage for partners and customers." Jester added that her leadership would help the company simplify engagement, increase co-sell velocity and unlock new growth opportunities across its partner community, pointing to survey findings the company cited that 95 percent of organizations believe data challenges have slowed their AI progress.
Graff arrives from Commvault, where she had served as senior vice president of global partners and channel sales since July 2025, leading partner strategy and ecosystem execution across hyperscalers, managed service providers, resellers and alliances. Before Commvault she was vice president of global channel sales and alliances at Securiti AI, and earlier in a career spanning more than 25 years she held partner leadership roles through the growth phases of HashiCorp, Pure Storage and Palo Alto Networks. "The convergence of AI, cybersecurity, and data resilience is one of the most significant shifts of our generation," Graff said. "With the market's leading partner ecosystem, Veeam is uniquely positioned to lead, helping customers keep data secure, governed, compliant, and recoverable so they can accelerate safe AI at scale and deliver measurable outcomes."
Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Seattle, Veeam sells data protection, backup and resilience software to more than 550,000 customers worldwide, including 80 percent of the Fortune 500, through offices in more than 30 countries. Majority owned by Insight Partners since 2020, the company has expanded from virtual machine backup into cloud, SaaS, Kubernetes and hybrid workloads, and in 2026 rebranded its positioning as the Data and AI Trust Company, wrapping security, governance, compliance and recovery into a single data trust layer.
The hire reads as a direct strike at Veeam's closest data protection rival: recruiting the executive who ran Commvault's global channel gives Veeam both her playbook and her relationships across the shared partner base the two companies contest. Her appointment also suggests, though the company has not said so explicitly, that Veeam expects the next phase of growth in AI-adjacent data services to be won through partners rather than direct sales, with channel economics built around resilience operations. How quickly Graff consolidates Veeam's partner programs, and whether Commvault moves to defend its channel leadership after losing a second senior partner executive in two years, will be worth watching through the remainder of 2026.
