'VMware to revamp its existing partner ecosystem in India'- Uma Thana Balasingam

In an exclusive conversation with DQ Channels, Uma Thana Balasingam, Vice President of Partner and Commercial Organisation, VMware APJ has announced the change in channel strategy throughout APJ and how VMware is revamping its existing partner ecosystem in India.

What are the recent developments in VMware?

We have significantly transformed our partner ecosystem. Last year, we announced Partner Connect. It was an overhaul of a nine-year-old program. We wanted to restructure our ecosystem to present greater technical depth and service mastery.

This is a critical time for us at VMware as we build out our partner route to market capabilities. This is focused on three areas. One is growing and expanding our traditional selling strategy. That is focused on transactions and will continue to deliver value-based customer engagements. We are moving faster to what we call the ‘orchestrate with’, and the ‘build with partner’ models. Our “orchestrate with” model is where the ecosystem is at the crux of the hybrid and multi-cloud world and where we scale VMware franchise platforms which include application modernization, multi-cloud, intrinsic security, virtual cloud network, and digital workspace.

Our focus on orchestration enables our partners to deliver across different stages of the customer lifecycle. It also furthers our mission of establishing connected ecosystems and nurturing customers for life. Our strategy is really to lead with what we call a partner lead use case space expertise.

The other thing that we are mindful of is that this is happening organically. It is taking multiple partners in, at least 30% of projects globally that we know of, involve more than two partners. The orchestration of partners coming together to deliver that outcome for the customer is one of the key roles that we see, for distribution now and going forward. And the third model – the “build with partner” module is really about a partner ecosystem that is forward-looking with a clear path to becoming the platform of choice for developers and modern cloud-native applications and multi-cloud SAS offerings. We have high aspirations here and think it is achievable with our new partner first approach. If we were to become the digital foundation provider of choice for our customers, it will be dependent on how well we make technology consumable for our partners so that they can build their unique and differentiated IP and services to deliver outcomes for those customers.

So let me share the news around our distribution assessment. We have evolved greatly as a company and the expectations from our customers have changed as they modernize. This has necessitated a change in partners as we felt it was great timing for us to ensure that together with our partners, we’re best positioned to take advantage of that opportunity.

We see distributors as a really important extension of VMware because they bring that multi-vendor capability that VMware can benefit from as well. One of the findings of the RFP is that our distribution partners, greatly value the VMware solution in a relationship because we also bring an ecosystem pool for them. So we invited all our incumbent distributors and some potential distributors to participate. The evaluation was done by a third-party consultant, which is KPMG globally. We also engaged with a third party to run the same process here in Asia Pacific markets, including India. For all in-country review meetings, we provided the chance for all the participating distributors to present their proposals in person.  This was back in 2019 and then we put it on pause, due to the pandemic. We are now officially announcing the decisions. So, all the in-country assessments were done fairly and consistently. In India specifically, we evaluated five distributor entities and three of them incumbent and two candidates.

All had very strong submissions, however, after evaluating the business plans and investment proposals by two of our incumbent distributors which is Tech Data and Ingram Micro, we felt that they provided a very strong proposal that we could consolidate our distributors in India to two. As such, we will be coming to an end of our partnership with Reddington as of April, 30th this year. We had a great partnership with Reddington and we thank them for their efforts.

Are you also bringing some new schemes and incentives programs for partners?

We are pivoting some very exciting new incentives for our ecosystem. As we make this transition and support our customers to change and modernize to subscription in SaaS, we’re finding a very diverse ecosystem of partners. We used to be able to describe a partner by their title earlier, for instance, they’re a reseller, a system integrator, etc. But what VMware is focused on is the partner value versus the partner time. Hence, you will see us coming to market with a refreshing look at how to relook at the journey of the partner to support them throughout the lifecycle to get to those customer outcomes they need to deliver.

What are the training programs that you are also bringing for the partners?

We’ve got an extensive set of options available to our partners. With the pandemic last year, we announced free access to VMware learning zones, which is bite-sized learning for around two to three minutes. Everything from that to our largest online partner enablement engagement called Empower. This is going to come this year as well, where partners can get access to over 100 experts at VMware. We’ve got other certifications competencies and master services competencies, as well as more focused workshops like outcome-based workshops where we give partners the tools to deep dive into having those types of conversations with customers. We have got a varied end-to-end approach when it comes to partner readiness.

How are you communicating with your old partners who are associated with Redington, and not with Ingram Micro and TechData?

Based on the timelines that we are working towards, we are currently in our first quarter (February to April), and then we’re going to be transitioning with them to ensure that the existing partners and the business are minimally impacted by this process. We expect to have the process completed by May.

Any expansion plan on the partner ecosystem with Ingram Micro and Tech Data?

We have got this broad portfolio against our five franchise platforms. We do have a very diverse ecosystem today and will continue to bring new partners. One area for example is around a multi-cloud and services ecosystem. This is something that we’re putting as an additional focus on, the ‘orchestrate with’ and the ‘build with partner’ model that I described earlier. We will be working towards implementing data to recruit those partners, that’s going to help bring their expertise, especially around their services capabilities to help customers on their cloud transformation.