San Francisco, CA – VMware wants to show its commitment to professional services partners, and to do this, it’s giving them their own partner program.
Dave O’Callaghan, the company’s senior vice president of global partner ogranization announced this morning at PEX 2015 the VMware Partner Professional Services Program, which will initially be aimed at consulting partners that have expertise in providing software-defined data centre (SDDC) solutions.
The pilot will run through the first half of financial year 2015 with select membership, and is expected to expand in the second half of the year.
Those in the program will access SDDC experts, training discounts, customer-focused labs and more.
According to Carl Eschenbach, VMware president and chief operating officer, it should help ease the question of whether whether the company is competing with partners for professional services.
“Over the years, we had a very strong PSO (professional services organizations) group that worked directly with customers; that’s the way it was constructed to be worked,” said O’Callaghan. “We’re moving from a product platform to a portfolio approach with suites, and that leads to integration of services. Now we’re embracing you.”
In order to do this, VMware has hired Teri Bruns as what the company says is the first ever vice president of partner services. She previously worked as the senior director of global business development at Symantec, and is a self-described former partner of over eight years.
At a Q&A, Bruns explained that Professional Services would be a value program and that VMware is only looking for service-savvy partners that can achieve high-customer satisfaction, as opposed to thousands of partners.
“From a scale perspective, for us to hit the business objectives we have for growth, we have to push the friction out of the system, embrace our partners, get them enabled so that they perform with high quality with their customers,” she said.
In addition to the new partner program, VMware also made several other announcements in expanding its vCloud Air Network program, competencies, and even its own Partner Exchange event.
First, starting in Q2, the vCloud Air Network Program will include managed services opportunities, allowing partners to use the Air platform as their core infrastructure while differentiating through their managed services.
In certifications, VMware unveiled the Mobility Management Solution Competency, which will provide training in AirWatch enterprise mobility management in a program framework.
Meanwhile, a new Software-Defined Data Centre Competency will be available in Q2, and will require training in VMware Networking, Software-Defined Storage, Server Virtualization, Management Operations and Management Automation Solutions among other certifications.
Lastly, Eschenbach announced that PEX 2016 would be not one, but two conferences, one called the “Business Partner Summit” focused on changes in business models, and another for “technologists” to get more in-depth with products. The latter would coincide with VMworld.
“We need to change in how we engage with you, said Eschenbach. We’re evolving to meet your demands and your needs.”