In an interview with CRN India, Manish Alshi, Director – Partner Sales, VMware talks about the company’s recently launched Partner Connect programme, and how it is enabling flexibility and choice to realign business models and meet customers’ needs
How is VMware supporting its channel partner ecosystem, ensuring that business is least impacted, during the pandemic?
We have mobilised our partner ecosystem to help customers implement their business continuity plans seamlessly in a secure environment, with minimal business and societal disruption. Our partners are working closely with their customers to understand and anticipate their needs and support them with solutions they find value in.
In addition, we have carried out a series of training and hands-on labs for our partner community, to enable them on the exhaustive set of VMware’s BCP solutions, so that they can offer seamless and uninterrupted support to their customers in addressing their immediate needs in these challenging times. We are sponsoring training to upskill our esteemed partners on the entire array of our BCP solutions.
The training is provided through virtual training programmes enabled in our virtual labs, giving partners the flexibility to either attend live online training or access the training as per their convenience and availability, through an on-demand mode of delivery.
The VMware Learning Zone (VLZ) is the single source for digital learning from VMware for its partners. To enable our partners to grow their skills on various VMware technologies and better face the current IT challenges, VMware is offering is esteemed partners complimentary access to the VLZ premium subscription for the next six months.
By working closely with its partners, VMware has amplified its ability to help enterprises across the region to implement their business continuity plans quickly, with minimal operational disruptions.
Could you elaborate on the new channel partner programme?
VMware’s Partner Connect programme was launched on February 29, 2020, providing partners a single and consistent programme experience with the flexibility and choice to realign their business models to meet their customers’ most pressing needs. Partner Connect delivers simplified engagement with VMware for partners, making working and growing with us easy, intuitive, and profitable.
With VMware investing in new technologies, the programme will give our customers the flexibility to leverage their IT business models on a secure platform where our customers can grow their business with VMware’s trusted partners. Customers will be able to identify and implement ideal VMware solutions in a much-simplified manner. Going ahead, VMware will continue to help organisations strengthen data security, minimise risks, and cyber threats with secure devices and improve threat detection.
We have made it easy for our partners to engage with us through a single agreement which enables them to pick the solution of their preference, to address and invest in training and upskilling their resources to meet market demands.
Could you share details on the new WFH solutions for your customers?
VMware is actively extending support to its customers for work-from-home or remote working initiatives with the below set of business continuity solutions:
Digital workspace:
Empower remote workforces with a digital workspace experience that delivers access to any app on any device without compromising security
Enable remote workers with flexible device choice and deliver business-critical virtual desktops (VDI) and applications to any corporate-owned or BYO device.
Secure application access with a Zero Trust access control model, no matter whether applications reside in the cloud or the data centre
With an elastic infrastructure, IT can scale to meet changing remote work demands.
SD-WAN
Enable reliable, remote access to traditional applications in your on-premises data centre and cloud services and applications from anywhere.
VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud provides speedy rollout, simplified management with automation, and assured performance so that customers can empower employees to continue business activities in uncertain times.
Scale on demand
VMware Cloud on AWS delivers scalable, better secured and consistent infrastructure in the AWS Cloud. Leverage vSphere-based elastic capacity in the AWS Cloud across 17 regions in under two hours
Protect your infrastructure with VMware Site Recovery DR in the cloud
Spin up virtual desktop infrastructure with VMware Horizon 7 running on VMware Cloud on AWS.
Cloud-native endpoint protection
Protect remote workforces against cyberattacks without any additional infrastructure
VMware Carbon Black Cloud makes it easy to reduce the attack surface, prevent malicious behavior, and respond to attacks no matter where the endpoints are located
The employees being protected as well as the security teams taking action can operate effectively without stepping foot in an office.
Advanced load balancing
Deliver great end-user experience to remote employees with analytics-driven load balancing for high-performance virtual desktops (VDI) and applications
VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer (Avi Networks) enables elastic, multi-cloud load balancing for turnkey Horizon VDI deployments on-premise or in the cloud
Central management of load balancers, on-demand autoscaling, and pinpoint application and end-user analytics simplify operations, reduce troubleshooting effort, and save costs.
Currently, our focus is on helping our customers respond and adapt to the ongoing situation, with minimal disruption, using the above business continuity solutions, based on their priorities and requirements.
How is VMware facilitating secured access to the internal application for the channel?
VMware provides all the requisite information and knowledge base to its partners through a secured portal – Partner Connect. This is a single source of information that our partners can access securely through requisite validations. The partner resources that are readily available for our esteemed partners include:
Partner Connect Portal: The Partner Connect Portal provides everything needed to effectively manage VMware business. Gain access to marketing and sales resources including incentives, exclusive opportunity registration, product information, enablement, and support resources
Partner University: Accessible via the VMware partner portal, Partner University gives partners access to all the training and learning resources needed for requirements compliance as well as learning for competitive differentiation
Partner Support Centre: The VMware Partner Support Center offers best-in-class support to all partners, with a strong focus on ease of doing business through each step of the partner journey
VMware Knowledgebase: The VMware Knowledge Base is a searchable database with resolutions to common technical issues, tips, and technical notes, and answers to VMware product FAQs. This repository of articles provides support solutions, error messages, and troubleshooting guides for all VMware products
Partner Performance Dashboard: The Partner Performance Dashboard provides partners with visibility into their current progress against the program requirements, and the resulting tier placement achieved based on their performance.
What is VMware’s digital strategy for 2020 and beyond?
As organisations across industries gear up to meet evolving customer expectations in 2020, we expect to see further advancements in unified management of data, privacy, and security from the digital workspace to the cloud. We must keep our partner network updated and trained to help enterprises across the region implement their business continuity plans quickly, with minimal operational disruptions.
In 2020, we are also focusing on increasing co-selling through the channel and are continuously looking at engaging with partners earlier in the conversation and sales cycle. As customers seek more flexibility, faster innovation, increased efficiencies, and better RoI from modern technologies, VMware will continue to empower them with services to accelerate digital transformation initiatives across industries.
We will also provide essential guidance ans support in strengthening our partner’s capabilities and driving their growth. We are focused on increasing the profitability of their VMware line of business through a robust partner incentive programme.
