VMware has confirmed its partner numbers have gone down around 600 in the last 12 months, since Broadcom completed its acquisition of the cloud and network software firm.
At this week’s annual VMware Explore customer and partner event in Barcelona, Laura Falko, the Broadcom global partner programmes leader, was asked by IT Europa how total partner numbers were affected by its well publicised cull.
Falko said last year VMware had around 18,000 partners globally, and that 14,200 were invited to confirm their continuing involvement soon after the acquisition. She added, that since then, a further 3,200 partners had joined the company’s channel programmes, giving it a current total of around 17,400.
The reduction has included a number of distributors. Falko said there were “too many distributors”, and with fewer of them there was “no race to the bottom” when it came to generating new channel business.
In a partner ecosystem event, involving other channel execs in front of press and analysts, we were also told that the number of professional services partners in the EMEA region was being reduced from around 100 to “between 20 and 30”, as it was deemed better quality services partners would be better placed to support VMware’s expansion in customer services.
We also learned that the EMEA region on the service provider side was thriving, making up 1,100 partners out of a total global figure of 1,800. The main focus of these service provider partners is making sure that the company’s VMware Cloud Foundation software is at the heart of everything in the service provision space.
The execs maintained that VMware’s move to a subscription licensing model would involve partners more around the customer lifecycle, to create a “more sustainable” operating business for them, with them becoming more involved in the build and development of deployments.
The company however, realises the overall changes will create uncertainty among partners going forward, and says it is “keeping communications open” with partners, to enable it to “fine tune” its approach when it needs to. Future changes are being communicated on an on-going basis through new portals, dashboards, and face-to-face meetings and round-tables between senior management and large customers, partners and distributors.
More from the VMware Explore conference to follow...
