With the intention of aligning program designs with channel partner’s business model, enterprise software provider, VMWare has recently rolled out its Partner Connect program which is significantly simplified and flexible.
The VMWare Partner Connect program hinges on three tenets- simplicity, choice and innovation.
“This means that the entire process has become simple which is the first pillar. Also, the partners can choose to be with us in terms of their own choice. We navigate through news and information, to serve their customers. When I talk about choice, it has been a gradual promptness from just resetting licenses to the various models that have evolved in the market. So the partners can choose any of these routes to market models or just resell licenses of the clouds or these services in a much better fashion. And the last pillar is innovation, which obviously happens to our continuous integration of products and offerings to cater to the customers, the partners can just dip into the pool of the knowledge base as well as the solution that we have on the table, not just to our organic norms of involvement, but also through the organic growth which is primarily acquisition of companies and products such as carbon black, Willow cloud and pivotal forays into the new media,” says Manish Alshi, Director, Partner Sales, VMware India.
VMWare with its Partner Connect is committed to creating clearer paths to profitability for its partners. It is the outcome of the collaboration with partners to develop and deliver a program experience that recognises and rewards partners based on how they want to do business.
The program extends to three reward tiers- Partner, Advanced Partner, and Principal Partner.
Principal Partners will be the most capable partners to help customers identify and implement the ideal VMware solutions. As partners achieve Principal status they will earn comprehensive rewards including deployment and consumption incentives. Being a Principal Partner identifies you as the go-to partner for VMware as we drive joint business planning and develop co-selling opportunities.
All partners will be expected to demonstrate basic capabilities through the achievement of solution competencies. All partners will receive deal registration benefits, and as they expand their level of capability and meet sales and/or consumption thresholds, they will earn greater rewards including development funds and front and backend margin opportunities.
Partners will be recognised and rewarded as they invest in and achieve Solution and Master Services Competencies, aligned to VMware’s key strategic IT priorities, and contribute to customer success and achievement of business outcomes. VMware continues to encourage partners to invest in MSCs to gain capabilities today and to prepare for high placement in Partner Connect.
“There are three incentives and investment programs that run for its partners. And these are all infused in the Partner Connect Program. The first one notes that if a partner brings an opportunity to the table, then we absolutely replenish the partner with monetary benefits by putting something as a big plus program and extend them discounts and support from our end. Another advantage is that once the partner locks in an opportunity, the entire sales team will be behind the partner to support in terms of successfully closing the opportunity. In addition, we do have a series of benefits which are known as the solution rewards. Thus, in tune to this, as the partner invest more in VMware, in terms of building a solution, they are rewarded in terms of percentage points, so for example, in a certain solution in India if the partner has completed a solution competency and he is up selling licenses as a solution to the competency then the partner gets packaged solution reward as a percentage of the net licensing that he has executed as an identity,” Alshi informs.
He goes on to say that, “This is arguably one of the best programs that I have seen over the last few years where the success of this program actually has been issued by the ecosystems. And then last but not the least, we also have joined our teams with the partners to ensure that there are more demand generations in the industry. The fact that if you have to keep the ecosystem excited it is actually through letting them know that as they bring in enough opportunity on the table, we from our side also extend the development funds program. Thereby, what we do is, at the beginning of the financial year, we have a joint business planning exercise, where we focus on the areas that the partners would want us to as a part of the go to market strategy. So we have a dedicated development funds intact which is then released according to the demand generation.”
The company is vertical agnostic and every vertical is of importance to it. VMWare like any other modern-day tech company today is trying to break the stereotypes around compartmentalising partners as conventional systems integrator or solution provider or service provider or reseller, etc. and is laying focus more on how they can go to the customers with enhanced solutions and competitiveness. And for this- Simplicity, Choice and Innovation is what they bag out to the partners to go-to-market hand in hand.
