VMware puts partners at centre of vCloud Air update

vCloud Air MSP Programme allows partners to maintain control of cloud services, says UK channel boss

VMware has claimed its recently launched vCloud Air MSP Programme is gaining momentum among its partners and is allowing it to provide a more partner-centric public cloud offering.

Announced in April and launched in the second half of this year, the vCloud Air MSP Programme allows partners to provide a single contract to their customers by combining their own cloud services and cloud services from VMware's vCloud Air.

Speaking with CRN at this year's VMworld in Barcelona, VMware's UK channel chief, Phil Croxford, said previously VMware would contract directly with the customer with its vCloud Air services, even though it goes through the partner as a transaction. The system would also show the service to be derived from its vCloud Air public cloud.

With the vCloud Air MSP Programme, partners can now incorporate vCloud Air services, alongside their own private cloud services without any customer interaction from VMware. And they can deliver it as their own white-label cloud service.

"An example would be a reseller who has built a cloud service and wants to provide a disaster-recovery service alongside their cloud service, but doesn't want to build another datacentre," he said.

"So they can sell the customer their own cloud service in their own datacentre, and use vCloud Air as the disaster-recovery. The customer is paying x a month and it's split into an amount of money the partner gives to us for our component - the disaster-recovery service - and the rest of it goes to the partner.

"Before it was two separate contracts and we would have had direct contact with the customer which makes the partner feel uncomfortable."

He added the new system allows the partner more control of the customer relationship.

Croxford said since the programme - which sits under the vCloud Air Network banner - was launched, 10 European partners have signed up to it, most of which are in the UK.

"It's gaining momentum," he said. "We have Carrenza in the UK, who are a service provider and were the first partner to sign up and they already have three customers on the service."

Dan Sutherland, Carrenza's CEO, said: "From our perspective, it's really useful. It gives us the ability to scale into markets where we didn't have much presence and it gives us the opportunity to run some interesting disaster-recovery advantages."

Richard Kerr, VMware's Northern Europe channel director, said the vCloud Air MSP Programme allows partners to provide value without forking out for their datacentres.

"The core infrastructure piece is not really their value," he said. "It's expensive for them and they can leverage vCloud Air as a core infrastructure and build their value as-a-service on top, so they don't have to invest in datacentres."