Virtualization vendor VMware (NYSE: VMW) used its recent Partner Exchange conference in San Diego, Calif. to launch a series of enhancements to its VMware VIP Partner Program designed to accelerate expertise, profitability and opportunity for the vendor’s 13,000 global partners.
The enhancements include an expansion of VMware’s Authorized Consultant Program, the launch of the Alliance Affiliate Initiative, and a program to enhance the green value-proposition of virtualization.
The enhancements to the authorized consultant program are all about accelerating partner profitability around the services opportunity says Julie Eades, director, worldwide partner marketing at VMware.
“Services is such a big area for our partners,” said Eades. “Not only do they make revenue from the license (sales) but typically they see 4-6X in VMware-related services for every dollar spent on license revenue.”
To help its partners accelerate the services side of their business, VMware has launched a series of service-acceleration kits focused initially on chargeback, configuration management and FDA compliance, with more to come down the road.
“We’ve taken the best intellectual property from our professional services organization, packaged those assets up, and provided it to our consulting partners so they can brand them as their own and package it with their own services,” said Eades. “We’re seeing a lot of partners very interested in this. Some of them have their own assessment services, various health checks and jump-start programs; this is really helping them take it to the next level and expand the services business they have today.”
Eades adds the vendor is also working to educate partners that haven’t yet ramped-up their services play on the opportunities it can bring to their business, with training to help them get started.
Recognizing the importance of certifications, VMware is also launching what Eades calls a new “uber” certification, the VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX). It will sit a level above the existing VMware Certified Professional certification (VCP), which Eades says has become very valued by customers and has even begun to be written into requests-for-proposal.
“(VCDX) is really meant for those technical professionals that are architecting and designing complex VMware enterprise deployments,” said Eades. “This certification includes everything from (studying and tests) to presenting to a panel a case study about how you’ve done that within a customer scenario.”
On the partner profitability front, Eades says the new VMware Alliance Affiliate Initiative will use vendor co-operating and co-marketing to provide better margins and more support for partners that go to market with multi-vendor solutions.
The program is focused around areas such as business continuity, disaster recovery, security, networking and storage, and participating vendors include CA, VisionCore, McAfee, EMC, NetApp, Dell/EqualLogic and Riverbed, with more to come.
“If you’re a partner you never just want to go in and sell one product, you want to sell a whole solution,” said Eades.
Accordingly, she says the alliance program is a framework through which the participating vendors can launch initiatives within their own partner programs to provide additional incentives for their joint partners when they go to market around virtulization and VMware.
“Generally, they’re putting extra margin via their own deal registration programs, specialized training and extra marketing incentives,” said Eades. “We’re working with them to make sure it’s the right training, to make sure we align ourselves with them, and heavily promote this to our partners.”
And on the green front, VMware will shortly be launching a program, called Going Green, that will see the vendor working with utility companies (including BC Hydro) that offer incentives for going green. The program will help VMware partners make it easier for clients to access these rebate programs, making virtualization an even more attractive proposition for businesses. All the monies from the rebate will go to the client, and in some cases, says Eades, there are also incentives for the partner from the utilities for enabling the deal.
