VMware has announced the next evolution of VMware Partner Connect, which will deliver a flexible framework to support partners’ go-to-market with VMware, accelerate partner growth, and reward partners for the totality of their achievements and capabilities.
Partner Connect’s new framework aligns with today’s cloud, services, and solutions-centric business models. It will help partners drive better business performance and profitability while transforming their businesses for tomorrow. VMware is delivering several immediate benefits, with additional capabilities and enhancements to be made available in the future.
Partners need to perform today while transforming for tomorrow. VMware has identified three core profit drivers that show up consistently within the company’s most profitable partners: Services, Lifecycle Profit, and Stickiness. Each pillar is synergistic and interconnected to create revenue and profit opportunities.
For partners focused on these three areas, the results are tangible. When comparing VMware’s most profitable partners to the worldwide averages: more than 80% of revenue from their VMware practice is driven from services (cloud, managed, professional); services profit is 1,5X higher, and professional service days revenue is more than 2X higher.
“VMware has applied learnings from thousands of partners to drive the next evolution of Partner Connect and help partners perform while they transform. VMware is well positioned to help partners capture on the massive and growing opportunity in multi-cloud,” says Tracy-Ann Palmer, vice president: partner experience, programs and investments at VMware.
“We now have one unified partner program that will be more flexible and efficient, with simpler paths to progression and more tools to help manage partners’ VMware business. We’re optimising incentives and programs to help partners take their SaaS and subscription businesses to another level and capitalise on cloud-centric business models and economics.”
Michael Wilson, senior channel manager at VMware Sub-Saharan Africa, comments: “Partner Connect 2.0 is a natural evolution of our channel programme. As we continually strive to future proof any investment our customers make in VMware, extending this to our partner community is no exception.
“Customer needs are changing daily, and providing value is and will always be the most important requirement of any partner. However, in this digital/cloud-driven world, partners need to be able to pivot their offerings and services at the drop of a hat.
“By simplifying our Partner Connect Program, we allow our partners to transition to an as-a-service/subscription offering and maximise their service capabilities. Which we all know in the channel world is where the real value lies.”
New Partner Connect Structure
With the next evolution of Partner Connect, VMware partners will benefit from a new flexible point system, simplified tiering, a business model orientation, and add more self-service and automation to improve partner efficiency and profitability further. Partner Connect will reward partners for different ways they create value, including both performance and capability activities.
Progression in the program will be based on the new points system rather than a complex mix of IT pathways. Partners progressing to the new Pinnacle tier will experience even greater financial benefits and VMware engagement, including managed account coverage, joint business plan development, and access to big bets programs.
Partner Connect will also support four different business models under a single program: Solution Services, Solution Builder, Cloud Solution Provider, and Solution Reseller. Creating this flexible, collaborative framework across these four business models enables VMware to unify support across all business models.
VMware will deliver a new self-service dashboard that provides partners easy-to-access visibility into where they stand in the Partner Connect program. Partners can better track their progression, and incentives earned, competencies achieved and other valuable telemetry for managing their VMware business.
SaaS, Services and Solutions Selling
Customer Success practices are critical to helping customers realise continuous value from the cloud, SaaS, and subscription offerings. They are also a key component of the Lifecycle Services identified by VMware as a core profit driver. With the new Partner-Led Customer Success Specialisation, partners now have three options to execute Customer Success.
Partners can build their comprehensive offering through the Specialisation, collaborate with VMware on Customer Success activities, or resell VMware Success 360. These options enable partners to guide customers through all the stages of their multi-cloud journey with VMware solutions while providing a consistent method of working with customers to help them realise the value and achieve outcomes faster.
VMware has launched the Go-To-Market Play System (GPS) for VMware partners to meet the twin goals of delivering customer outcomes and partner profitability. Centred on transformational business challenges (Strategy Plays) and discrete focused IT solutions (Velocity Plays), GPS provides defined solutions with unified enablement and incentives to increase value and reach and digital marketing support.
With GPS for partners, VMware is transforming fragmented GTM programs into a unified approach directed at customer outcomes. These GPS plays are central to VMware’s outcome-oriented partner enablement and go-to-market evolution, driving end-to-end alignment from partner capability development to customer success.
VMware is now making the VMware Ignite program more broadly available to partners and has aligned it with the Go-To-Market Play System and partner-led services initiatives. VMware Ignite is a unique partner practice activation and development program featuring a rigorous, proven methodology providing structured development paths to build capabilities across technical, sales, services, and marketing functions.
Moreover, it gives partners access to training and VMware experts to support sales and practice development; and a variety of development paths for new and committed partners and distributors.
With Solutions Lab, partners can deliver differentiated solutions that are repeatable and tailored for market fit. Solutions Hub is an integrated digital self-service platform that streamlines the content creation, orchestration, and go-to-market process for partners’ solutions. Solutions Hub provides the digital tools to activate and publish curated solutions to VMware Marketplace today and additional third-party marketplaces in the future, measure pipeline, adoption, and penetration effectiveness, and accelerate time-to-market through automation.