VMware debuts multi-cloud partner portal

VMware has launched a new “Cloud Provider Hub” for partners and hopes it will give channel organisations beyond its Cloud Provider Program (VCPP) an easier way to offer its cloud and SaaS services.

Like many vendors, VMware has worked hard to develop new SaaS services or make its current products consumable as SaaS. But as explained to CRN by Dan McLean, VMware Australia’s senior director for cloud sales, the company did not have a single tool with which partners could manage those products.

The new version of the Hub delivers that and more, including tools to handle trouble tickets from multiple clients in one place. The Hub also offers customer on-boarding, plus provisioning and managing services, either by the MSP or through customer-self service using a dedicated “Tenant console”. Both the MSP console and Tenant console offer a UI or an API, the latter creating the chance to use third-party software to consume and/or use the Hub service.

For now the Hub can manage vSphere, vCloud Director, VMware Cloud on AWS, AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Azure, plus some VMware SaaS services.

In future VMware will add more of its own SaaS and third-party software sold in the VMware Cloud Marketplace, an integration that will see MSPs able to offer the likes of F5, Puppet and Tren Micro as-a-service from a single portal.

McLean told CRN the new Hub is aimed at MSPs who resell cloud services, rather tan VCPP members. The latter, he said, are willing to create and operate their own VMware-powered clouds and see doing so as a critical point of differentiation and can use vCloud Director to manage clients.

What VMware's new Cloud Provider Hub covers

Which is not to say that VMware has any less love for its VCPP members. Quite the opposite in fact: during its Q3 2019 earnings call last week the company revealed that the VCPP program revenue grew by 30 percent year on year and CEO Pat Gelsinger said “we're seeing great momentum in that business”. Gelsinger has previously attributed VCPP demand for VMware’s core vSphere product as the reason he reversed a forecast that the product had commenced a long-term decline. VMware was pleased to report that prediction was wrong and that its core compute virtualisation product continues to grow.

Q3 was another cracker for VMware: revenue of US$2.2bn beat forecasts by $30m and was 14 percent higher than last year’s corresponding quarter. Net income hit $334m, even after a loss of $161 million from an investment in Pivotal Software was taken into account.