VMWare Partner Program: Yay or Nay?
The Broadcom Advantage Partner Program appears to have created some challenges
When two companies merge, there’s usually some angst that drives the early days of the partnership. In addition to the team integration within, there is a challenge in getting the channel partners tuned to the new order. And the Broadcom Advantage Partner Program that was hyped as a financial opportunity seems to have generated divergent views of old VMware partners.
The program, which was revealed days after the Broadcom-VMware acquisition, has generated ire amongst erstwhile VMware partners who were left scrambling to join it, having been given barely a few days or even hours to do so. In fact, a recent report by SDXCentral notes that some past partners and enterprise customers were upset.
What did VMware come up with?
The announcement itself was quite clear. In a blog post earlier this month, Cindy Lloyd, VP of global partners and commercial sales at VMware, described the program as a simple and scalable framework for business units and partner routes. It takes a modular and flexible format that was a result of conversations with the partners.
“During our many conversations with you about your needs—and what worked and didn’t work with the previous partner program—we heard quite clearly that you needed simplification to reach your revenue potential,” Lloyd says while listing out the net margin model, streamlined pricing, predictable partner profitability and deal protection as some of the positives.
“You, our partners, are key to reaching this goal. We are committed to creating value within our ecosystem, which has only been made stronger with the addition of VMware’s partners. Our partners will be able to grow their businesses as we accelerate execution and drive expansion into private and hybrid cloud for enterprises,” the blog post notes.
What are the partners worried about?
However, there have been continuous murmurs around how partners had to scramble at the last minute to join the program, which they felt was Broadcom’s way of doing business and hasn’t gone down well with VMware partners. Some are reportedly seeking alternatives, which could be music to the ears of competitors who have been attempting to break the VMware-partner network for a considerable amount of time.
A key concern also surfaced from small and mid-sized businesses who have invested in VMware products and appear unsure of the future. In spite of the efforts of Microsoft and its Azure stack, VMware holds dominant market share, which means customers are worried because they have access to all their processes and procedures as people are trained on it. What would happen if the VMware environment is itself under threat?
Which is why there are those who advocate seeking alternative hypervisor options in the open-source environment (e.g. the Linux kernel-based virtual machines). Of course, there is no reason to worry for now as none is quitting VMware but if Broadcom doesn’t pull up its socks and act with more sensitivity to the users, the rug may just get pulled from under their feet.
