VMware bears ELA gift for channel

Channel-friendly Enterprise License Agreement scheme to be rolled to Europe following UK pilot

VMware has said that a UK pilot scheme including partners in all Enterprise License Agreement (ELA) deals has been so successful it will form the basis of a wider European rollout.

Back in July, VMware internally announced its ELA Preferred Partner programme, a scheme mandating that all of its Enterprise Licence Agreements (ELAs) – which tend to be larger deals – must have a partner from its indirect General Business (GB) arm linked to it after the channel complained it was getting left out.

Speaking at its VMworld partner and channel event in Barcelona this week, Andy Hunt, the firm's vice president for channel and alliances in EMEA, said that it changed its stance on its ELA channel involvement based on feedback from partners.

"Partners were saying two things: one, that it was not easy to engage with VMware on ELAa; two, the margin we make on ELAs is not huge," he conceded.

"Historically, ELAs have been used as a tool within VMware as something that we drive at the top end of our enterprise accounts and our [direct] account managers are involved in doing that. But we quickly realised that as we have a general business segment which is partner driven, we need to engage more with partners to drive ELAs."

Hunt added that the initiative was driven by VMware's UK channel manager Ed Dolman and his team, and said they had been so successful the scheme is being catapulted into Europe.

"The success we have seen with Ed and his team is basically the model we are taking out across Europe but the announcement was basically something we never told the world before," he said. "In the UK it is mandated that we must have an ELA Preferred partner on every deal."