Partners flock to sell VMware after rebate revamp

Number of partners transacting for vendor grows six times after rebate overhaul

The number of partners transacting VMware's vSphere with Operations Management (vSOM) products has rocketed six times in as many months, the vendor has claimed.

The firm put the surge in popularity of the products down to an overhaul of its rebate structure back in February, which saw partners offered improved rewards for selling into new customers. The overhaul also saw partners offered a range of other payments made up front at the time of sale instead of as a rebate.

Richard Kerr, VMware's director for channel alliances in northern Europe, said that the changes have been hugely popular and have driven extra partner sales.

"From a traction perspective, we've seen - since [the new incentives were] launched in February so over the last six months - if we compare how many partners we had transacting in the first few months with how many in the last few months, there has been six times as many partners. It really has got huge momentum right now," he said.

But Ed Dolman (pictured) said that although some partners are doing great work in selling advanced virtualisation products, there is still a huge chunk of the market available for partners to exploit.

"A lot of this information from the keynotes at VMworld, as you'd expect, is forward-looking," he said.

"We need to reiterate the message to partners how much opportunity there is in core virtualisation.

"There is a significant number of partners who have not even started on the virtualisation journey, but also [many which] have started but are only single-digit or low double-digit virtualised. We should not ignore these opportunities."