Veeam’s David Weekley: APJ partners must move faster as AI reshapes the channel
With distributors critical to enabling partners in the region, David Weekley, Senior Director for Channel and Partner Sales in APJ believes that skilling and enablement remains the biggest challenges for partners.
In the Asia Pacific region, David Weekley has spent more than eight years at the vendor supporting the partner ecosystem in the region. As Veeam’s Senior Director for Channel and Partner Sales in APJ, Weekley remains focused on not just helping partners get better in servicing customers but also address the many concerns partners are having as the vendor continues to innovate its products and solutions.
Weekley, who was recently named Channel Manager of the Year at the CRN Channel Awards Asia 2026, spoke to CRN Asia on the trends, opportunities as well as challenges he is seeing in the partner ecosystem in the APJ region.
According to Weekley, in conversations and feedback he has received from partners during their recent meetings and events is mainly focused on AI and where it is taking everyone in the industry today.
“As we move into more AI, sometimes it's like three forces colliding. When you think about AI and what the partners are experiencing and certainly what the customers have, you've got the data gravity, which is flipping from structured to unstructured. And then you've got the infrastructure to deploy AI, which is obviously hyper growth at the moment. But then the infrastructure to trust it is not really at the stage where it needs to be,” he said.
For Weekley, there’s three forces at the moment when partners think about AI. Partners are scrambling to try and adopt their knowledge base around AI and how they take that to market. Customers are also really striving to work out how they can actually protect their environment rather than just adding a layer.
“The conversations we've had with partners is that there's a lot of opportunity being built on the back of AI Factories. It's an opportunity because we obviously have security AI as our portfolio. And when we start to wrap that in as a layer into what the offering is, I think it's going to really help us with the DSPM play into some of the markets on the back of these AI factories that are being developed,” Weekley said.
Specifically, he believes that there will be born in AI partners that will be so fast in using AI and will get a better traction with customers.
“Our traditional partners are still trying to work out what that AI layer means on top of the data. Whereas I think the born in AI ones really understand that a little bit more. For example, there's a distributor based in New Zealand that is really heavily into the AI. So, a lot of their stuff that they're doing is not requiring a human effort to a degree, because the quotes are being requested and spat back out by using AI as a platform. So, I think the adoptions coming, it's how we move with it is going to be the real pivotal point,” he said.
The role of distributors
As Veeam gets an organic amount of partners that come in every single year, Weekley explained that it's key to identity what those partners' immediate needs are and how Veeam can develop and grow them.
“We are the number one in the market by sheer size. And we've put a lot of work in to get there. And core to that is the growth that we've had with our partners along the way. We are a channel organization. We've got 35,000 plus partners across the region now. And APJ has formed a very meaningful and diverse slice of that. It's a very good time to be a part of Veeam,” he said.
Weekley also highlighted the strong role distributors play in bringing success to the vendor.
“We expect a lot from our distributors. They are not just there from the traditional distribution landscape, but we also put a lot of effort into enabling them from a technical standpoint, so that they can lead that technical conversation. Because as we onboard partners, and we have an organic number of partners onboarding into the Veeam ecosystem every year, we need the distributors to be able to scale them up. And that part of that is technical enablement,” Weekley explained.
“Five years ago, our presales team was saying that the disties were too much of a drain on their technical resources, because they're needing assistance all the time. Fast forward to today, I'm having our disties saying, ‘we're doing a lot of the heavy lifting from your presales team’. So, I think we've really turned things around and getting them really technically enabled and geared to help us drive that adoption,” he added.
With distributors critical to enabling partners in the region, Weekley acknowledged that skilling and enablement remains the biggest challenges for partners.
“As the partners grow and as we get into this AI piece, enablement is key. It's critical to everything that we do. Understanding the product and being able to position the product and also sell the product is critical to everything. And I think for any vendor, the enablement piece is one of the biggest challenges we have today,” he said.
This is also why Weekley is said that the partner advisory council board it has in the region is critical to supporting the needs of partners. This includes sharing the feedback and being heavily involved with the global team and program, especially on the framework for the partner program.
“APJ is unique in the fact that we are very eclectic in the way that we have with all the countries that sort of sit in APJ and ANZ is different to India or to Japan. So, I think we have a lot of different challenges, which form a lot of programs that we put out there. As a channel business, we want to make sure that our partners are working with us and are profitable and are seeing the benefits of being a Veeam partner. And the same with our distributors. It's a very critical role in forming our framework of our program to help us serve them better,” he explained. -
Growth in APJ
Interestingly, Weekley pointed out that the APJ region is actually the growth engine at the moment for VEEAM compared to the other regions globally. This is because the vendor works closely with its distributors and partners on how they can add into the gaps that they've got in.
“One of the biggest ones coming out of a conversation we had in our summit in Sydney, whereby Ingram Micro have built a really strong AI capability, and there's a gap that they've got in their offering, and we fit perfectly into that. So, I think that there's a lot of opportunity for us to work with our distributors, even with some in other regions like India and Japan,” he said.
“We want to develop with those distributors to really promote out to partners. We still want to be undisputed number one, and we're still aiming for that as a market leader. But it's not just a market leader in the backup space now, it's AI space. So we're looking at how we can create a new category, which is backup and AI,” he added.
As Veeam continues to build the ecosystem together, Weekley believes the vendor has shown that they are heavily invested in their business and want to continually evolve with partners.
“We take the feedback that we get from our partners on board very seriously, and we do adopt and change and work with them to really be where they are and help us grow with them jointly. So, I think there's a lot of opportunities together. As I said, there's a whole ecosystem out there we're yet to uncover, and especially as we move into this AI space. So, it's how we can identify them and work well with them,” he concluded.