At the IT Press Tour 2026 in Sofia, Storware CEO Paweł Mączka presented the latest multi-platform backup features, security measures, and future migration tools.
The Polish company Storware announces the release of Storware Backup and Recovery 7.5. The new version expands data protection across heterogeneous environments and strengthens migration capabilities to OpenStack. This follows the presentation given by CEO Paweł Mączka at the IT Press Tour in Sofia, where he structured the company’s approach into three narrative sections: the spirit of the past (2013–2023), the spirit of the present (2024–2026), and the spirit of the future (from 2026). Version 7.5 delivers several features that were outlined as future developments during the tour.
The spirit of the past depicted the founding of Storware in 2013 in Warsaw and the early focus on open-source virtualization platforms at a time when many companies relied on VMware. The company introduced enterprise-scale endpoint backup in 2015 and Microsoft 365 data protection in 2018. Technical evaluations in 2019 led to OEM and vendor agreements with IBM, in 2020 with Dell Technologies, and in 2022 with OpenText. Storware has also developed OpenVirtualization.pro as a vendor-neutral resource for KVM, OpenStack, Proxmox, and XCP-ng and was a co-author of the official OpenStack Data Migration Guide for the OpenInfra Foundation.
The spirit of the present described market conditions that included sharp increases in VMware license costs following the acquisition by Broadcom, ongoing ransomware attacks with high costs for data losses, and mandatory European compliance requirements according to NIS2 and GDPR. The Storware platform supports virtual machines, containers, private clouds, storage providers, applications, and operating system agents under a single license. Backup targets include file systems, object storage, Storware Cloud, external providers, and tape. Native integrations include Nutanix AHV since 2018, Oracle Linux KVM since 2019, OpenStack since 2019, OpenShift Virtualization since 2023, VergeOS, and Canonical OpenStack. Security features include air-tight copies, immutable storage, encryption with multi-factor authentication, hardened repositories, single sign-on, and audit reporting.
Version 7.5 adds several improvements. It introduces a strategic technical partnership and integration with Platform9, a provider of private cloud solutions for enterprises with Private Cloud Director. The integration enables customers to protect, scale, and manage workloads across Platform9 environments.
Sirish Raghuram, co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at Platform9, stated: “Business continuity is a major concern for VMware customers looking to migrate to a sustainable, future-proof alternative.” Our close collaboration with Storware has enabled rapid progress to jointly meet this growing customer demand and facilitate a secure migration for businesses.
The new version expands support for V2V migration. In addition to the existing VMware-to-OpenStack features, it now enables cross-platform recovery and the integrated migration of Citrix Hypervisor and XCP-ng to OpenStack. This reduces complexity and vendor lock-in for organizations adopting modern workloads. Further improvements include support for the Nutanix v4 API with a redesigned VM backup workflow that utilizes volume groups for better performance and scalability. Proxmox users receive Ceph v19 compatibility without interrupting backup operations and can use a synthetic backup target to shorten backup windows, reduce storage consumption, and lower network usage.
OpenStack extensions focus on inventory synchronization, which is now faster and more granular, with optional domain scanning and API-driven project updates. The consistency of recovery benefits from improved metadata protection, while multithreaded read operations enable a performance boost for OpenStack and OpenShift Virtualization backups. The OS agent processes metadata databases more reliably and accelerates object comparison during cleanup operations, which is relevant for large or multi-tenant setups.
Paweł Mączka, CEO of Storware, commented: “OpenStack is no longer a niche solution—it’s where critical infrastructure decisions are made. The new version reflects that. We’ve expanded our backup capabilities for OpenStack workloads and strengthened the integrations our partners actually rely on. Heterogeneous environments are the norm today, not the exception, and we intend to stay one step ahead of this trend.”
The platform architecture remains consistent and continues to support the same broad range of sources and destinations as previously described. Deployment options continue to include software installation, a preconfigured NVMe appliance, and Storware Cloud as a managed service.
As part of the IT Press Tour, the “Ghost of Future” segment addressed the topics of data gravity as well as planned developments in the areas of replication and appliances. Version 7.5 enhances migration and integration tools in alignment with technology partnerships, which now include Platform9 in addition to Canonical, Red Hat, the OpenInfra Foundation, Nutanix, and VergeOS. The company states that it has over 4,000 customers in 150 countries and more than 300 partners.
Mączka highlighted four key points: the impact of VMware’s pricing policy following the acquisition by Broadcom; the expertise accumulated in the field of open-source virtualization; the focus on European data sovereignty requirements under the GDPR and NIS2; and differences in licensing models.
Storware Backup and Recovery 7.5 is now available as software or a preconfigured appliance. A free version and a 60-day trial are offered for evaluation.
Dr. Jakob Jung is Editor-in-Chief of Security Storage and Channel Germany. He has been working in IT journalism for more than 20 years. His career includes Computer Reseller News, Heise Resale, Informationweek, Techtarget (storage and data center) and ChannelBiz. He also freelances for numerous IT publications, including Computerwoche, Channelpartner, IT-Business, Storage-Insider and ZDnet. His main topics are channel, storage, security, data center, ERP and CRM.
Contact via Mail: jakob.jung@security-storage-und-channel-germany.de