Ahead Hires Over 300 Employees To Drive VMware VCF As Sales Soar

‘We’re very focused on growth of our traditional resale Broadcom and VMware licenses and a massive implementation team. So we’ve hired over 300 people, industry experts to help architect, design and implement some of the largest, most complex VCF 9 platforms in the industry,’ says Ahead’s Stephen Ayoub.

Solution provider superstar Ahead has hired hundreds of VMware-focused employees to drive VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) for customers as its VMware sales have skyrocketed 80 percent year over year.

“We’re very focused on growth of our traditional resale Broadcom and VMware licenses and a massive implementation team,” Ahead’s Stephen Ayoub, co-founder and executive vice chairman, told CRN.

“So we’ve hired over 300 people, industry experts to help architect, design and implement some of the largest, most complex VCF 9 platforms in the industry,” he said.

[Related: Ahead Moves 120 VMware Clients To RapidScale In Big VCSP Deal To Give Enterprises ‘Best Of Both Worlds]

Over the past 12 months, Ahead’s overall VMware sales growth was around 80 percent year over year, while VMware services sales “have over doubled,” Ayoub said.

“So we look at both resale as well as services, and we’re seeing both of those trending very favorably for us,” Ahead’s co-founder explained. “We have a commitment to VMware to continue to position and sell the platform, optimize the platform, and make sure that our clients realize the full potential of the investment in the Broadcom suite.”

Ahead’s ‘Huge’ International Expansion

Ahead ranks No. 24 on CRN’s 2026 Solution Provider 500 list.

Ayoub said business is going so strong that the Chicago-based company is expanding further internationally, opening new offices and facilitates in the U.K., India and the Netherlands.

“We’re going to focus on international expansion. We built out facilities in London, in the Netherlands, and we’re going to continue to develop go-to-market teams over there,” said Ayoub. “So that’s a huge push for us.”

In 2026, the company also opened a new air- and liquid-cooled rack integration facility at its Libertyville, Ill., campus, as well as an office in Boston.

In May, Ahead acquired Netherlands-based technology services partner Prolimax.

Ahead Picks RapidScale As VCSP

This month, Ahead tapped VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) RapidScale as its sole VSCP provider.

The partnership unites RapidScale’s scalable managed cloud platform and operational expertise with Ahead’s infrastructure and transformation capabilities to deliver continuity and a clear VMware road map for customers.

After Broadcom dramatically cut the number of eligible VCSPs and revamped its VCSP program, many VMware partners needed to find an official VCSP partner, like RapidScale, to fulfill their clients’ VMware needs.

Ahead will move around 120 mid- to upper-enterprise customers from Ahead to now teaming with RapidScale.

“We’re giving these clients the best of both worlds,” RapidScale CEO Duane Barnes told CRN. “They have the utmost flexibility and optionality with two of the best companies in the business working to support them every day.”

Ahead will continue as a VMware reseller while leveraging RapidScale’s VCSP capabilities to support customers’ private cloud needs.

VCF Suite ‘Challenges The Economics’ Of Public Cloud

Ahead is deploying and managing VCF environments for a slew of customers that are seeing the business value of the private cloud platform.

“As clients deploy a platform versus a product, it takes specialists to be able to make sure that the investment of, not just VCF 9—but an Avi [Load Balancer], in vDefend, in ACC [Advanced Cyber Compliance] and the entire suite—in building a private cloud platform, which substantially challenges the economics of a public cloud when deployed properly,” Ayoub said.

VCF 9 is a private cloud platform that unifies compute, storage, networking and life-cycle management. On the innovation front, VMware recently launched AI Factory, which combines VCF with customers’ preferred AI software and accelerator architectures and certified VCF AI ReadyNodes from Cisco, Dell, HPE, Lenovo, Supermicro and others.

In addition, VMware recently added several new AI models from Google, Nvidia, NEC, Alibaba Cloud and Z.ai on VCF.

One key factor in sales growth is VMware pushing massive services opportunities to partners like Ahead.

“We’re seeing an uptick in our services business around VMware. It’s a very rich opportunity,” Ayoub said. “We’ve hired hundreds of people to help support the growth. … We’re bullish about VMware for the future.”