The best partner program can't save bad products: VMware

Beware of binge eating

"You don't harvest corn in June. But our field [team] keeps harvesting corn, because of quarter end pressure, way before the deals are ready," said Brown.

He said this causes partners to feel, at best, that the vendor is "blowing my project apart".

"And at worst… the partners say 'You guys are idiots. It's a three-quarter-long project – it's been funded. There's no risk to budget, yet you come in to discount by 18 percent to pull it into quarter. Of course they [the customer] are going to take it, but you were going to get the money next quarter anyway. So what the hell are you doing?'

"Partners, as business people, are looking at our field and going 'That's not healthy! That's binge-eating. That's not sustainable stuff.'"

The current situation requires VMware to restructure the "the economic model" and "the engagement of the field" so that the channel is "rewarded for healthy growth", said Brown.

Develop your own IP

Brown told the vForum crowd that "fearless innovators" in the channel would end up as the successful ones.

"How many folks in here have developed your own IP? Right, I'm going to say all of you should raise your hand because if you've developed solutions architectures, as you've developed ways to go to market and talk about stuff, you are creating IP," said Brown. "You're innovating for your customers and creating solution value."

The global channel exec said that every technology company is started by an "unemployable technologist".

"What I mean is that they don't like working for other people, so they go out and start their own [company] and become entrepreneurs... So that fearless innovation is really important."

The ultimate compliment

Promising to reform the VMware partner program, Brown said that there is one defining metric that indicates the quality of a program to him: "VMware systems engineer retention rate". When engineers leave to join the channel, it shows the partner program is lucrative.

"When my SEs – who are trained by us, have lived through our architectures and know how to draw up design solutions – say it's better to be a partner than a salaried employee with a fixed bonus, that's the thing I'm looking for.

"I want VMware employees looking at your businesses and saying, 'It might be better to go do that'. We'll get there."