VMware collaborating with partners to ensure mutual success

Ross Brown 
Sr. V.P., World Wide Partners and Alliances, VMware 

In an exclusive interaction with VARINDIA, Ross Brown, Sr. V.P., World Wide Partners and Alliances, VMware spoke about the commitment of VMware for the channel community across the globe –

Partners are a very important component of our business eco-system and theyare involved in creating a solution and then they take them to the market. VMware has done a great job for partners in being able to create an integrated set of platforms for both datacenter transformation to hybrid cloud and provide across our 4400 cloud providers a consistent set of tools and experiences that radically make it easier to deliver IT value and in return it creates value for our partners.

Digital transformation……

It’s a big transition period with multiple engagements where you have multiple choices with Open Stack, Azure Stack, ‘VCF’. Therefore, we are going to try to make the best argument we can, for what we can do there. So, one difficulty we have is how one chooses the platform. The other difficulty they have is, work moving upstream. For example, if you look at Fujitsu’s Primeflex or HP’s Composable Infrastructure with Synergy or Dell’s VxRack, you are looking at a much more simplified and hyper converged architecture because all the intelligence sits in the software now. We are managing the networking plane and managing the storage. That transition radically simplifies what infrastructure means. But in an integrated solution it’s very difficult to come in and say. 

Solution portfolio gets stronger with DELL EMC...

In Dell EMC merger, Michael Dell recognized a really good server company and a really good storage company. Putting them together you get integrated storage and servers and now you are building a Rack. By putting the networking switch in, you now have an integrated business. With the crown jewels in EMC; one is VMware and the other one is Pivotal, the opportunity can go win the architecture battle for hardware. I can go win the software battle for the software defined datacenter and we can also win the cloud native application architecture. That’s for partners who have connected the dots on that. Secondly, our deal with HPI and ‘Workspace ONE’ as their standard platform for managing their desktop as a service globally also speak of the vast opportunities we have. 

Major achievements for VMware mission ’17...

The merger between HP and SEAC speaks of making a decision that for all of their outsourcing clients that they are going to default to ‘VCF’. So, I would say there is an acceleration that’s going on and the biggest milestone we have achieved was moving from discrete products to platforms. We have created Workspace ONE and VMware Cloud Foundation because its gives us a tremendous platform instead of point products to then go build a great partner program and a great business. 

About 85% of our global transactions go through the channel and it will go to 90% next year. With some recent changes we are seeing 25% growth rate on the partner eco-system. Secondly, the growth of VMware has seen changes post-merger with Dell as it has increased from earlier 7-8% to 12.5% and that’s accelerating.

Going forward...

The reality is that it is a multi-Cloud world and the strategy of VMware is to focus not only to run on Clouds, but also helping customers thrive regardless of whichever Cloud they are in.

Tags: VMware, Ross Brown, ross brown vmware, digital transformation, michael dell, workspace one, dell emc, vmware cloud foundation, vmware cloud, varindia