Broadcom has chosen around 18,000 partners globally for its newly acquired VMware unit, and has announced the channel roadmap going forward.
The announcement comes after many smaller-volume VMware partners were culled from the original partner programme, following Broadcom completing its takeover of the virtualisation and cloud management software vendor. Last year, VMware had over 25,000 reseller partners.
Cindy Loyd (pictured), Broadcom vice president of global partner and commercial sales, said: “The future of VMware by Broadcom is here. We have invited all active VMware resell partners - more than 18,000 - to participate in the Broadcom Advantage Partner Program.
“With my new focus on resell and distribution, I wanted to hear directly from both Broadcom and VMware resellers and distributors. We gathered feedback from hundreds of partners globally, and the feedback was consistent. Solving channel conflict, re-evaluate profitability on renewals, incentivise long term adoption of our products, and simplifying were key themes in feedback.”
She said: “Based on that feedback, we evolved our Broadcom Advantage Partner Program to achieve much of what our partners asked for. The Partner Program now provides a proven, simple, yet scalable framework for all of our business units and partner routes to market. It also takes a modular and flexible approach to accommodate the unique needs of specific partner ecosystems.”
Updates to the programme include a net margin model, with all discounts systematically disclosed up front, across both new and renewal business.
There is also streamlined pricing, down to just four SKU bundles: VMware Cloud Foundation, vSphere Foundation, vSphere Standard and vSphere Essentials Plus.
Loyd also cited predictable partner profitability and deal protection, to protect partners who originally found an opportunity, so they can “confidently invest” in customer adoption and successful deployment of their VMware investments. This includes incumbency protection and deeper up-front discounts.
Broadcom has also created a single online destination to access all partner related resources - a role-based, single sign-on and point of entry for all partner sales tools, systems and dashboards.
In addition, Loyd promised increased resourcing and support. “Partners said cross-route and channel conflict was a challenge. To reduce this and improve partner and customer success, we have taken steps to create better alignment with business units, sales and partner teams, and to provide better support and resources.
“We’ve defined partner-owned and partner-led segments within our customer base, opened up professional services for our partners so they can drive adoption and customer success at very attractive margins, and we’ve redesigned our internal structure so that business units, sales, and partner teams can work together and provide better support and resources to our partners.”
