At the beginning of March, we completed a cycle of 2025 intakes in the Veeam Community when members of this year's Veeam Vanguard class were notified of obtaining their Veeam Vanguard status. It's always difficult to select the limited number of individuals who can join each year's class of this longest running community program at Veeam - we're entering our 11th year! Fortunately, we receive many great applications, but given the nature of our community, we need to keep it consistent and allow all members to get to know each other through the various initiatives and opportunities we offer them throughout the year. And that's just a fraction of the many benefits that come with membership in any of the Veeam 100 Community programs.
Bigger Picture
We often use terms like Vanguard, Legend, VeeaMVP interchangeably with Veeam100. Why is that? At Veeam we have 3 different types of community programs - Veeam Vanguards and Veeam Legends are dedicated to our external technical advocates who are not Veeam employees and do all their work for the community in their free time to enrich the community with their knowledge through content they share to educate others. Then there are VeeaMVPs - Veeam employees who actively contribute to the success of their peers and the broader Veeam community. All three of these community programs fall under the umbrella of the Veeam100. If you look closely at the graphics, you will see symbols from all three programs in each number, representing this mix of the brightest minds in the industry from all around the world.
What makes you a hero?
I often call the Veeam Vanguards community heroes because they have so many years of experience in various IT fields and they are willing to share their knowledge with others by creating different types of content ranging from in-depth technical articles, how-to videos, vlogs, conference speeches and podcast hosting. During my (almost) 6 years at Veeam, I have been able to see the impact this content generation has on the global community of Veeam enthusiasts who use it as a solid source of learning and inspiration. This is generally the main attribute that each member of the Veeam Vanguard program has - impact, influence, contribution while sharing their own knowledge gained through years of their professional career.
I often read the same answer to the question "Why should you become a Vanguard?" in applications for the new Vanguard class – „I have XYZ years of IT experience and have been with Veeam for XYZ years“. That's nice, I appreciate that, but the Veeam Vanguard program doesn't reward you for the years you've spent in IT or working with our products. It's about how you've used that experience to help others by sharing what you've learned over the years on your career path, how you've enriched the local or broader community with your knowledge. Have you published articles to help others learn from you? If yes, great, let us know, link to any content you've published, and I'll be happy to review it and consider you as a candidate. If not, you need to start, or you'll never get in - even after half a century in IT. Sharing is caring and we just love to pamper our community with the latest knowledge sharing from our members.
I can´t wait for the veeamazing content coming in from the current 2025 Veeam Vanguard Class that contains 49 IT professionals from all over the world. If you want some more numbers, we got Vanguards representing 16 countries and 6 continents! Here´s a full list of our heroes:
Al Rasheed
Andre Pulia
Andrea Mauro
Ben Harmer
Ben Thomas
Beth Souza
Cary Sun
Chris Childerhose
Christian Calabro
Christopher Glémot
Dave Kawula
Dean Lewis
Derek Loseke
Didier Van Hoye
Eric Machabert
Falko Banaszak
Federico Venier
Geoff Burke
Greg Barney
Ian Sanderson
Jim Jones
Joaquim Santos
Jochen Seeger
Joe Houghes
Jonah May
Jos Maliepaard
Julien Mousqueton
Justin Farrugia
Keiran Shelden
Kristof Poppe
Luciano Patrao
Lukas Klostermann
Markus Hartmann
Mateus Wolff
Matthias Beller
Maurice Kevenaar
Mikhail Kisselyov
Mohamed Adel
Nico Stein
Nicolas Bonnet
Paolo Valsecchi
Peter Steffan
Petr Bouška
Steven New
Thiago Dos Santos Nunes
Thomas May
Victor Wu
Vladan Seget
Zane Allyn
