Women & Diversity in Channel Awards: Q&A with Anna Lawler, VP global partner ecosystem marketing, VMware

As VP of global partner ecosystem marketing, Anna Lawler is responsible for driving VMware’s global partner marketing strategy, marketing to, through and with VMware's broad ecosystem of partners.

Why do you think awards like the Women & Diversity in Channel Awards matter? What would winning this award mean to your company?

In recent times, we've seen some great progress in increasing diversity in the tech industry - many companies now have dedicated DEI programs similar to VMware's. However, there is still much work to be done.

Diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives such as the Women & Diversity in Channel Awards are a great opportunity to give women and people from under-represented minority groups a platform to be celebrated for their success.

Winning this award would be a testament to the individuals who are nominated, well deserved recognition of their hard work and a celebration of the results they've achieved. It would be great for VMware too, particularly as we have a workforce that's passionate about DEI and actively making a difference in this sphere.

What would you say is your company's proudest achievement over the past year?

We've just come off the back of our flagship event, VMware Explore Las Vegas. The conference presented an incredible opportunity for us to showcase the great work that's taken place this year.

It was a fantastic event for us - we had over 10,000 attendees in-person and more who joined online. It was an opportunity for us to showcase product debuts, major partner and innovation announcements. We had on-stage surprises and non-stop networking.

The General Session, in particular, exceeded expectations as it shone light on one of VMware's biggest accomplishment this year, the announcement of VMware Private AI Foundation as well as our partnership with NVIDIA that aims to help customers bring the power of AI to the enterprise.

What have been the biggest challenges of 2023 so far and how have you overcome them? How have your people helped with that?

We are operating in interesting times - there's an economic downturn as well as pockets of inflation and recession in different markets worldwide. Yet, the channel remains optimistic in spite of that.

With more customers moving to a multi-cloud strategy, the reality is that the transformation journey is very complex. Because of this, customers are looking for partners to support them with that process. This translates into higher end-user demand for professional, managed and advisory services. There's also more demand for eco-system collaboration. This presents a huge opportunity for our partners, who are developing new practices, investing in upskilling and developing Partner-to-Partner relationships. It also presents a chance for vendors such as VMware to adapt the way we work with different partners.

For example, in 2023 VMware launched the evolution of our Partner Connect Program, which awards our trusted partners as they help and guide customers throughout the whole lifecycle.

It would also be remiss not to mention that there is a pending acquisition of VMware by Broadcom. Our teams have been adaptable, agile and resilient throughout this process. Our recent VMware Explore Las Vegas highlighted how hard everyone continues to work to deliver a quality customer and partner experience.

How do you think the channel has changed over the past year and what changes do you think it still needs to make?

As customers adopt a multi-cloud strategy, vendors and partners are having to adapt as well. The partner businesses that we're interacting with are evolving their offerings and business models to best support the customer journey. For example, we no longer have partners who are just resellers - our partners offer multiple products and services to customers and are investing greatly in core competences to deliver best possible customer outcomes and build long-life customer relationships.

Many customers' need to work with multiple different partners throughout their multi-cloud journey, based on their technology requirements and expertise. Because of this, we see partners joining forces to form their own partnerships in order to bridge customer IT gaps. I expect this trend to continue, certainly as Cloud adoption grows, and now in the fast-evolving world of AI and Gen AI, which presents enormous opportunity for our Partners and for VMware.

What do you see as the main opportunities for the channel in the coming year? How do you plan to capitalise on those opportunities?

As I mentioned above, there is ample opportunity for partners as our customers' digital transformation journey evolves. AI is a hot topic nowadays, the use cases emerging suggest endless possibility, and will only present more opportunities for partners.

From a VMware perspective, the pending acquisition by Broadcom is due to close on October 30. Our combined offering will be powerful in the market. There's a lot of positive momentum, with Broadcom committing to invest an additional $2bn, half of which will be focused on R&D and the other half focused on helping to accelerate the deployment of VMware solutions through VMware and partner professional services.