VMware Accelerates Partners' Profitability with New Customer Lifecycle Incentives

VMware, Inc. launched the Customer Lifecycle Incentives Program to help partners facilitate the end-to-end digital transformation for their customers. The program will help partners drive increased profitability through new and expanded customer engagement, a simplified experience, optimized incentive return on investment, and partner-to-partner cooperation rewards.

VMware partners can take advantage of the increased need for customer Software-as-a-Service transformation and shifting sales processes. Customer Lifecycle Incentives is the next evolution of VMware’s Partner Connect Program, the foundation of its partner ecosystem, which launched in February 2020. Partner Connect offers a consistent experience with clearer paths to profitability, whether reselling software or services, managing or hosting services, or providing value-add services to customers.

“At VMware, we are committed to continuously evolving our partner program to adapt to industry demands and customer expectations,” said Tracy-Ann Palmer, vice president, Partner Programs and Experience, VMware. “Customer Lifecycle Incentives is the result of extensive collaboration with partners to build incentives that matter to them. We are giving our partners more support and tools to differentiate and transform their business and VMware practices.”

VMware’s Customer Lifecycle Incentives provides partners with more opportunities to leverage unique skills and deliver value across the entire customer lifecycle, especially as customer goals become more complex and fluctuate quickly. It provides support across all routes to market to develop sustainable channel partnerships.

VMware’s robust, diverse partner ecosystem gives partners the ability to drive strategic and SaaS-driven partner engagement with business models to accommodate all types of partners. It also offers a differentiated technology stack that builds a digital foundation to meet developers’ needs. For the first time, these new offerings also provide increased opportunities for Services only Partners to participate in incentive programs.

New Incentive Offerings Include:

●     Technical Assessments– Designed to recognize the value in assessing a customer’s environment to address key business outcomes, the Technical Assessment Incentive empowers partners to identify key VMware solutions to solve customer challenges. Examples of technical assessments could include delivering recommendations on applications, optimizing server workload and virtualization usage, providing a list of applications that could be modernized, or creating a migration readiness and implementation plan.

●     Proof of Concept – This incentive will reward VMware partners that deliver proof of concept through a workshop, onboarding the customer, or through use-case implementation, demonstration and evaluation. It can be exercised by both transacting and non-transacting partners and will determine the feasibility of the idea or verify that the idea will function as envisioned.

●     Partner-to-Partner Accelerator – The Partner-to-Partner Accelerator rewards “Sell Through” partners who identify opportunities, book eligible orders, and hand off to the “Orchestrate With” partners to activate the solution and facilitate consumption of VMware services. This allows customers to purchase through their usual reseller and receive services from a specialized “services only” best of breed partners.

Partner Perspectives on the News AHEAD

“The new Customer Lifecycle Incentive offerings provide tremendous opportunities for growth

for our business by helping to reward the full capabilities we deliver to our customers for SaaS transformation and modernization,” said Jamison Nack, vice president, sales and alliances, AHEAD. “The evolution of the Partner Connect program over the last 18 months underscores VMware’s partner-first engagement and this latest program enhancement reinforces that commitment.”

 Xtravirt

“VMware’s launch of the new Customer Lifecycle Incentives is an innovative move, tightly aligning the needs of organizations today with VMware partner capabilities,” Gavin Jolliffe, CEO, Xtravirt. “This approach firmly places customer outcomes first, rewarding VMware partners who play key roles along the journey. Driving long-term customer success is at the heart of our business and we’re excited to be at the forefront of this program.”

ITQ

“Over the last year we have increased our investment to align more strategically with VMware which allows us the opportunity to significantly grow our business,” Dennis Hoegen Dijkhof, Vice President of SDDC, ITQ. “With the new incentive offerings, VMware is continuing to build significant opportunities for us to establish recurring revenue streams and drive real value for our customers.”

 NTT

“The new Customer Lifecycle Incentive offerings reflect strong feedback from the partner community and enable us to grow our business in profitable ways. Our long-standing partnership with VMware signifies the importance of our partner ecosystem and we are delighted to be part of this evolutionary program as well as the great opportunities for us and our clients,“ said Png Kim Meng, CEO – ASEAN at NTT Ltd.