VMware CEO Paul Maritz: Cloud Checkmate

According to VMware, VARs can also move to the cloud by renting co-location space from service provider data centres, and either offer white-label cloud offerings or set up a cloud offering in their own data centre, if they have one.

VMware is aware of the uneasiness that’s percolating in its channel and is endeavouring to explain how working with service providers will actually open up more business.

“We actually see this as a very big opportunity for our traditional partners to leverage and monetise the cloud, either themselves or in partnership with the service providers,” says Eschenbach. “But we’re not going to make it a competitive environment. We have to bridge the gap between the traditional service providers and our solution providers.”

What about partners that either don’t want to make the jump or simply can’t make it work  businesswise? Eschenbach says these VARs will not get left behind, estimating that 80 percent to 85 percent of apps will still be running in a private data centre –the traditional bailiwick of the VMware solution provider.

Cloud VARs of the future

VMware’s guidance on cloud has centred on the message that partners can find their niche in the new and unfamiliar landscape.

“They’ve told us that by allying ourselves with cloud service providers, we’ll be able to transform our businesses and become cloud brokers in the future,” says Weiss.

“They’ve also said the solution provider of tomorrow may be a cloud provider with a more boutique, high-touch model. We don’t all have to be Amazons – there’s also a need for channel partners that address a certain segment of the market.”

Unsurprisingly, VMware partners that are already well established in the cloud aren’t as concerned with the implications of the changing channel dynamic.

“What partners fear is the movement away from the private cloud, which is where they have control of the account. But those perceptions are off base,” says Keith Norbie, vice president of sales at Nexus Information Systems. “There are a number of service provider players that are going to make it very attractive for clients to move workloads into a public cloud.”

VMware often talks about the IT spending “drag” that VARs can take advantage of when re-architecting their customers’ data centres for cloud computing.

Doug Smith, VMware’s senior director of global partner strategy and operations, told CRN in March that $1 of VMware licensing generates an additional $15 in IT spending that partners can potentially capture. This obviously doesn’t apply when VARs work with public cloud providers, but there are still ways that partners can form financially fruitful relationships with these companies.