VMware on hunt for 500 EMEA Airwatch partners

Virtualisation giant looks to open up channel to Airwatch technology

VMware is targeting heavy channel recruitment for Airwatch and is looking to reach 500 partners selling the acquired technology in EMEA by the end of 2016.

Last January VMware bought the mobile-management and security firm for $1.18bn (£701m) but it has been slow to open it up to the channel, only letting partners get their hands on it in the second half of last year.

Sanjay Poonen, VMware's general manager for end-user computing, said in February that partners have been frustrated that the company was not opening up the technology to resellers.

But now the virtualisation giant is looking to remedy this and John Churchhouse, VMware's EMEA SMB director, said he is targeting heavy recruitment of resellers for Airwatch.

"We have 120 partners focused around mobility solutions," he said. "We think the opportunity is so huge that, having got those partners into the programme, we now want to take it to take it to scale in 2016, from a channel perspective. We are setting ourselves the goal of taking that 120 partners up to 500 in 2016, as a minimum requirement.

"It's a goal, and it's significant in terms of growth. But I'm optimistic we can go way beyond that."

Churchhouse said this target was specifically for 500 partners selling Airwatch solutions across EMEA.

He added he was hoping these partners were mainly going to be from within the existing VMware partner base, and on the whole it would be resellers focused around SMB and mid-market.

He also said this recruitment was going to be delivered through VMware's EMEA distributors.

"A lot of the time I have been at VMworld over the last three-or-four days, we have been working with our distribution partners," he said. "The ask of our distribution partners is they help us to recruit those other partners, to enable them, to drive demand generation and to take it through to transactions. The appetite we have observed from all the distribution partners is enormous. They all want to invest in this, and they all see the opportunity."

Churchhouse said along with this recruitment drive, VMware is upping its Airwatch rewards for resellers.

"The other thing we have done with Airwatch is we have made it what we call a Power Play. A Power Play with VMware is chosen every six months, and we align all of the resources in terms of marketing and a partner perspective to drive that Power Play. Traditionally it has been Vsan, Vson and hybrid cloud.

"Airwatch was added to that mix, and what it means is partners get accelerated rewards for opportunity registration. If you are a top-level partner, you can now get up to 22 points. If you combine that with back-end rebates; it's a very profitable business opportunity for partners."