VMware: Cloud service providers no threat to VARs

Space for both resellers and service providers in VMware's cloud model, virtualisation giant claims

Paul Maritz: Service providers a key route to market for our hybrid cloud vision

Virtualisation giant VMware claims its reseller partners are wrong to live in fear of cloud service providers stealing their customers.

At the vendor's VMworld partner conference in Copenhagen, the company's chief executive, Paul Maritz, told delegates it would be using service providers as a key route to market for its hybrid cloud vision.

Speaking to CRN at the event, VMware's vice president for partner and alliances, Andy Hunt, stressed that there is space for both resellers and service providers in the cloud.

"Resellers are a little bit scared and fear cloud providers will start to sell into their core enterprise customer bases," he said. "Our message back at them is, do not be afraid; there is room for everyone."

Instead, resellers should concentrate on selling private clouds into the enterprise because of the "massive revenue opportunity", urges Hunt. "That's still where the revenue is and what our customers are demanding - so [resellers] should not lose sight of that."

Resellers should also look at ways to work in collaboration with service providers to win more business.

"There are service providers out there talking about building their own clouds, but a lot of them do not know how. So, resellers should not be afraid to start selling clouds built for enterprise customers to service providers," he said.

However, resellers in a position to build their own clouds should not shy away from competing directly with service providers.

He added: "Some partners want to build their own clouds. They have the knowledge, the backbone and the datacentre, and should not be afraid to compete with traditional service providers."

Systems integrator MTI recently sold a private cloud platform based on the VMware, Cisco and EMC Vblock infrastructure package to service provider Cobweb.

Richard Flanders, project marketing director at MTI, said he expects that reseller-service provider collaborations will be a trend that gains more traction as the cloud market matures.

He added: "Our motto at MTI is 'three's a cloud', which is represented by our partnership with all three vendors in the Vblock coalition and are feeling that cloud is a technology that many will need partnerships to deliver."