GFA Symposium

Ratmir Timashev P’ 21, ‘23 is a globally recognized entrepreneur, technologist, and philanthropist. He is the founder of Veeam Software — the global leader in cloud data protection and management software, headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, as well as the Kubeshop software incubator. 

Mr. Timashev was born in 1966 in the city of Ufa, the capital of the Bashkortostan region in Russia. Surrounded by music and the arts growing up, his family was full of engineers. Ratmir later decided to pursue higher education studies in the 1980s in Physics and attended the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, graduating in 1990 with a Master’s degree in physics.

Motivated to complete his Ph.D., Mr. Timashev was recruited into the Chemical Physics Ph.D. program at Ohio State University (OSU) in 1992. In 1996, he graduated from OSU with a Master’s in Chemical Physics. Throughout his studies, Mr. Timashev had been intimately drawn to entrepreneurship and to the burgeoning world of the internet and its many opportunities. He launched several businesses to support his growing family and these early ventures sparked his interest and creativity in launching global brands in the early days of the internet.

While still a Ph.D. student at Ohio State, Mr. Timashev co-founded Aelita Software in 1997, an enterprise network management company, with his best friend from home Andrei Baronov.  Baranov joined Ratmir in Columbus, Ohio that year, and the two friends led the company through double-digit growth, year-over-year. Focused on Windows Server systems management and monitoring software, Aelita Software grew to $30 million in sales over its first eight years. At the beginning of 2004, the company was sold to its prime competitor, Quest Software, for about $115 million. Ratmir had become a General Manager at Quest Software, responsible for the new Windows Enterprise Management business unit. He left Quest Software at the beginning of 2005.

Later that year, Mr. Timashev began realizing the potential of virtualization technologies. In 2006, the pair started a new company named Veeam Software.  The company’s first products were designed for managing and monitoring the VMware ESX virtualization platform. In 2008, it released a backup tool called Veeam Backup & Replication, which soon became Veeam's flagship product and helped the company enter the backup market. Under the leadership of Mr. Timashev and its executive team, the company also launched “Veeam Cares”—the company’s philanthropic organization that promotes and leverages the team’s expansive volunteerism across the globe. In March 2020, Insight Partners acquired 100% ownership of Veeam for $5 billion. The acquisition allowed Veeam to continue its expansion of offices to 30 countries and to serve customers in over 160 countries.

A thought leader on all matters tied to business, technology, and leadership, Mr. Timashev is an active voice online. He is a member of the Fast Company Impact Council, an invitation-only network of leaders and executives that meets throughout the year to discuss issues of importance in business and society.

The impact of Mr. Timashev and his wife’s leadership and philanthropy extends far across cultures and the globe. Established in 2017, the Timashev Family Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to investing in communities and younger generations across the United States and the globe. The Foundation supports a number of leading organizations operating on the frontlines for communities through innovation, the arts, and in other important areas including education and human security.