Veeam Appoints Allison Cerra As Chief Marketing Officer

Veeam has appointed Allison Cerra as Chief Marketing Officer. Reporting to CEO Anand Eswaran, Cerra will lead global brand, product marketing, demand generation and communications as Veeam positions data resilience as a strategic enabler for AI-era enterprises.

Veeam’s selection of Allison Cerra signals a strategic push to sharpen the vendor’s market story as organisations race to make data a competitive asset in the AI era. Marketing at enterprise software vendors is no longer about brand alone; it must translate product capabilities into measurable business outcomes — especially where trust, resilience and data mobility underpin AI initiatives.

Cerra’s remit and background

Cerra joins Veeam from Alkami Technology, where she served as Chief Marketing Officer since 2021. Her leadership resume spans Hewlett Packard Enterprise, McAfee, Intel and Alcatel-Lucent, giving her experience across enterprise technology, cybersecurity and cloud platforms.

She will oversee Veeam’s global marketing organisation, including brand strategy, product marketing, demand generation, events, communications and digital engagement. The company positions the role as pivotal while it expands offerings that help organisations safeguard and mobilise data for AI workloads.

“Allison understands the intersection of technology and trust,” said Anand Eswaran, CEO of Veeam. “She’s built brands that connect deeply with customers and teams that turn marketing into a growth engine. As Veeam enters its next phase of innovation, helping every organisation trust its data to safely power AI, her leadership and clarity of purpose will help us tell that story to the world. Allison is the kind of leader who makes things simple, real, and powerful, and I couldn’t be more excited to welcome her.”

Strategy: data resilience as a growth narrative

Veeam’s product positioning centres on data resilience — the ability to recover quickly, adapt faster and use data with confidence. Cerra’s brief will likely prioritise messaging that links resilience to AI readiness: showing how recovery SLAs, immutable backups and data mobility reduce risk while unlocking experimentation with AI workloads.

Her past work at HPE (digital-first go-to-market transformation) and McAfee (brand identity post-separation from Intel) suggests she will focus on modernising Veeam’s demand engine, aligning product marketing with buyer outcomes and tightening the feedback loop between customers and product development.

Cerra succeeds Rick Jackson, who is retiring after a 40-year career and three and a half years as Veeam’s CMO. Eswaran acknowledged Jackson’s role in modernising Veeam’s customer engagement while framing the appointment as a move to scale the company’s next growth phase tied to AI and data mobility.

“Rick elevated Veeam’s brand and modernized how we show up for customers and partners,” said Eswaran. “We’re deeply grateful for his leadership and wish him the very best in his well-earned retirement.”

What customers and partners should expect

Expect a sharper emphasis on use-case storytelling that links Veeam capabilities to enterprise outcomes: faster recovery, regulatory compliance, safe data experimentation for AI, and hybrid-cloud portability. Cerra is likely to prioritise:

• clearer ROI narratives for data resilience investments;

• campaigns that showcase AI-era customer stories and reference architectures;

• strengthened partner and channel enablement to drive adoption at scale.

“As Allison Cerra, CMO at Veeam, said: ‘In a world where AI is reshaping what’s possible, data resilience isn’t just protection – it’s permission to innovate,’” — a concise framing that captures Veeam’s next marketing play: position resilience as the foundation for enterprise innovation, not merely a defensive requirement.

Veeam’s ability to convert this messaging into tangible demand will depend on Cerra’s execution across product storytelling, partner alignment and market-facing programs. If done well, Veeam could broaden the conversation from backup and recovery to data-as-infrastructure for AI.