The new EMC-VMware Pivotal initiative is poised to "kick-start" the two company's big data sales efforts, creating a sharper focus on the market opportunity, said VMware's top channel executive in an interview with CRN.

"We are bringing people together from the various organizations, processes together from the various organizations," said VMware Senior Vice President Global Channels and Alliances Scott Aronson. "By putting these entities together and by putting people together, we are going to be able to kick-start the combination [of the big data technologies] much more rapidly than you would expect if this was sort of an organic growth opportunity [from the individual VMware-EMC big data technology entities]."

The two companies announced the formation of the Pivotal initiative, which includes 800 EMC and 600 VMware employees, earlier this month. The combined resources include sales, engineering, operations and field support resources, said Aronson. "It really is the whole shooting match associated with each of these independent operating entities."

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The big data technologies, on their own in both VMware and EMC, were not getting the attention they deserved relative to the huge market opportunity, said Aronson. "It is not core to what EMC does. It is not core to what VMware does," he said. "So bringing these assets together and putting them under their own operating entity is going to bring more focus and synergies in really pushing that [big data] agenda into the market."

Pivotal, which is being spearheaded by EMC Chief Strategist Paul Maritz, is comprised of platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings including VMware's vFabric group, with GemStone and SpringSource, VMware Cloud Foundry and Cetas teams along with EMC's Greenplum and Pivotal Labs organizations.

Aronson said it remains to be determined whether the new Pivotal organization will have its own separate channel sales organization. He said the channel plans will be rolled out in the "not too distant future."

"They are still forming the organization now," he said. "The first announcement was: this is the intent to push these assets together, create an operating entity around it. Right now Paul [Maritz] and the team are working feverishly to pull together the full-blown leadership team and define how that go to market is going to work and operate into the future."

NEXT: Pivotal Big Data Sales Offensive Is Underway

VMware's Aronson said the good news is the big data channel sales groundwork has already been established by both VMware and EMC. "The great news is there is already a ton of traction," he said. "There is already a lot of adoption that is happening. It is just a question of how to take advantage of the momentum that is already there, pull it together and then amplify it yet again. More news to come."

"Right now it is par for the course," he added. "I don't anticipate a massive amount of change in the partnering strategy or what we are doing with the partner community at large. What we will bring to bear is more attention, more effort and even more focus than the partner community has already seen in this technology area. I think it is a huge net positive!"

Aronson said big data technology and sales arms race favors Pivotal. "I personally don’t believe there is a better company and group of technologies to partner with in the market today than what is being developed right now with Pivotal," he said. "If you look at those independent pieces, it is really, truly an end-to-end solution. I think as we move through time that will continue to come together, synergize and simplify."

"If you look at the lineage that VMware has, for example, in working with the partner community, it is at the core of everything we do," said Aronson, a 10-year VMware veteran (employee No. 151) who has been a key architect of the VMware partner strategy. "That DNA is already present and will continue to be infused into the new operating entity. If I was placing a bet with the full backing of a company like VMware and the full backing of a parent company like EMC, I don't think there is a safer bet out there all things considered: partnering history, technologies, strength in parent companies, alignment around the [big data] technology and the [big data] movement going forward. We are not taking forward legacy [technology]. This is all about net new technology innovation. So, I don't think there is a better bet in this sector than what this new entity is going to be all about."

PUBLISHED DEC. 19, 2012