VMware uveils 6 new partner incentives and offers

VMware channel partners are receiving a shot in the arm via new lifecycle incentives, rebates as well as brand new access to Cloud Universal and the VMware Marketplace.

“In this multi-cloud world, especially with the announcements VMware is making this year, it really puts partners at the front and center of leading the transformation with our customers,” said VMware’s global channel chief Sandy Hogan in an interview with CRN. “So we really invested quite a bit here in working through how we evolve our incentives, how we evolve our certifications and how we evolve the whole partner-to-partner ecosystem.”

VMware has updated its Customer Lifecycle Incentives portfolio so that the more partners do, and the closer they are to their customers on their transformation journey, the more they earn, said Hogan, senior vice president of worldwide commercial and partner sales. She added that everything VMware is launching today for the channel is focused on its “customer-first, partner-led” strategy.

“That means continuing to move from what has traditionally been for VMware a very transact motion with our partners, to now the customer lifecycle. That leads to this whole new world of influence, deploy and consume,” Hogan said.

Here are the six new channel incentives and partner offerings unveiled at VMworld 2021 today that solution providers need to know about.

photo

Partners can now sell solutions on the VMware marketplace

The VMware Marketplace now has buy and sell capabilities for channel partners to enable customers to leverage the new marketplace-driven software economy.

With this new capability, customers can now seamlessly purchase certified and validated partner solutions directly from the VMware Marketplace and deploy these solutions to VMware endpoints.

“We’ve been able to commercialize the Marketplace,” said Hogan. “It didn’t really have the full transactability to enable both the partner buy and sell capabilities. So this is certainly a pivotal part of the overall Marketplace strategy. Obviously, customers are purchasing through hyperscaler’s marketplaces and distributor marketplaces as well, but we’re very excited about what this will open up for us in giving partners the ability to offer their unique solutions on the VMware marketplace.”

The VMware Marketplace allows organizations to choose from an ecosystem of third-party solutions and services, designed and tested to run on VMware-based clouds.

“We expect a nice level of growth and uptake over the coming months as more and more partners evolve this,” said Hogan.

photo

New deployment incentive for NSX, VCF and vRealize

VMware is dishing out a new lifecycle Deployment Incentive around the deployment of new solutions that don’t impact a current customer’s infrastructure.

“It’s mainly around our NSX-V to NSX-T migration, around VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) enhancements, and around vRealize,” said Hogan. “So it’s really about helping the partners drive deployment of the new technologies that we’re enhancing.”

Hogan said the new Deployment Incentive is rebate oriented. “So based on the success and tracking of that, we rebate the partners back based on what they record and deploy,” she said.

Lifecycle incentives are mapped to customer needs before, during and after sale, with additional rewards for partners that team up to drive even greater customer value. The new incentive is part of VMware’s broader channel efforts to help modernize customers environment around application modernization, cloud consumption and overall sales.

photo

Technical assessment incentive for VMware Cloud on Dell EMC and AWS

For the first time, VMware partners are now eligible to receive a technical assessment incentive to support VMware Cloud on Dell EMC as well as VMware Cloud on AWS.

“We have provided support for VMware Cloud on AWS, and Dell, for the proof-of-concepts and the technical assessments. We’re continuing to expand the depth and breadth of what partners can provide those capabilities for,” said Hogan. “The technical assessment incentive is about giving our partners the ability to get incentivized for the broader set of solutions.”

Delivered as-a-service to data center and edge locations, VMware Cloud on Dell EMC provides secure and scalable infrastructure in a consumption-based manner. The solution is build on Dell EMC’s and VMware’s jointly engineered hyperconverged infrastructure VxRail, which includes Dell server and storage hardware integrated with VMware’s vSphere, vSAN, SD-WAN and NSX.

VMware Cloud on AWS in an integrated cloud offering aimed at delivering a scalable and secure service by migrating and extending customers’ on-premises VMware vSphere-based environments to the AWS Cloud running on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud.

photo

Cloud Universal is now partner enabled

VMware has now enabled Cloud Universal for channel partners to help solution providers accelerate customer journeys to a multi-cloud environment. VMware’s Cloud Universal is a single, cross-platform management solution aimed at simplifying multi-cloud complexities for partners and allows them to be agnostic in response to changing customer preferences and adaptable to customer needs.

“What’s more, it empowers partners to effectively capitalize on the multi-cloud revolution at scale,” said VMware’s global channel chief.

Cloud Universal provides partners and customers the flexibility and tools to build multi-cloud strategies that are simpler, more robust and more efficient. Hogan said its simplified subscription model helps partners lead customers on the path to multi-cloud at their own pace, with maximum flexibility, choice, and guidance.

Hogan said with the addition of VMware Tanzu Standard, Cloud Universal unlocks application modernization efforts without having to initiate new procurement efforts or complicated billing.

photo

Success 360: Partners can now offer their own services

VMware’s Success 360 offerings allows partners with VMware’s Master Services Competencies to, for the first time, offer their own services for all the stages of the customer lifecycle.

Hogan said partners can now play greater roles in customer success delivery with VMware Success 360, which is a comprehensive SKU-based offering that guides customers through all the stages of their digital transformation. Master Services Competency partners can now collaborate with VMware on Success 360 delivery by owning specific components within the customer success plan that match their capabilities.

“So we are now enabling our partners to work with us in providing their unique services capabilities, and defining roles and responsibility at the customer level, on what they would provide for customer success versus what VMware would provide,” Hogan said.
“So it’s a very collaborative model now to maximize the unique capabilities of VMware and our partners.”

photo

New Cloud Activation and Consumption Growth Incentive

Another new incentive VMware is offering partners is a Cloud Activation and Consumption Growth Incentive. The new lifecycle rebate gives partners funding who grow customer activation of VMware services across their customer portfolio.

“So when you think about this, this is really bringing it all together to incentivize partners to essentially grow their VMware services across the customer portfolio. That’s the accelerator from a customer standpoint, because that speaks to the ultimate customer success,” said Hogan. “Those are the real critical elements that continue to expand across the lifecycle that we have not traditionally done.”

This article originally appeared at crn.com

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *