VMware Partner Touts Broadcom’s Focus On ‘Remaining Partners’ And Joint Deals With Former Resellers

‘As hard as it sounds, we have the feeling that the remaining partners get a lot more attention and there is a lot more co-operative work between VMware and the remaining partners,’ says Yves Sandfort, CEO of VMware Premier Partner Comdivision.

With Broadcom trimming down its VMware partner ecosystem, Comdivision CEO Yves Sandfort says Broadcom-VMware is now working better with remaining partners, which are also winning more deals by working with former VMware resellers.

“As hard as it sounds, we have the feeling that the remaining partners get a lot more attention and there is a lot more co-operative work between VMware and the remaining partners,” said Sandfort, who is the Broadcom-VMware Premier Partner’s longtime CEO, with over 30 years at the company.

“What we currently see is that with the reduced partner head count, it gives Broadcom the ability to focus more on the remaining partners,” he said.

Not only is Broadcom providing more resources to the remaining partners that are able to sell VMware, but forward-thinking partners like Comdivision are teaming with former VMware partners to win over more customers.

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“We are working with a growing amount of partners who had to leave the VMware ecosystem. In those scenarios we are working collaboratively with these other partners where they can still sell all their other services and have Comdivision come in and actually do just the VMware part,” said Sandfort.

How Comdivision Is Driving VMware Sales With Other Solution Providers

Following Broadcom’s blockbuster $69 billion acquisition of VMware in 2023, Broadcom drastically reduced the number of partners able to sell VMware, while also launching new partner programs tailored to having fewer channel partners. In addition, Broadcom launched a new, more inclusive VMware Cloud Service Provider program, which resulted in the departure of thousands of former VMware cloud services channel partners globally.

Sandfort said Broadcom’s channel strategy had led to many former VMware partners contacting and teaming with Comdivision due to the company’s VMware prowess.

“[Former VMware partners] understand that we can actually bring the full width of the VMware stack because we have skill sets in all the different areas—not only basic hypervisor but storage, network, security, automation, AI, operations and all of these areas,” he said.

This is leading to bigger VMware implementation deals, which is a win-win for both partners working on the deal.

“Even if they do not run VMware, the VMware sale by themselves, they still do the sale of the underlying hardware. They still do the sale of the underlying network infrastructure. They still do the sale of all the other operating systems,” Sandfort said.

CEO On Why Former VMware Partners Don’t See Us As A ‘Threat’

One key reason why former VMware partners aren’t afraid of turning to Comdivision to provide VMware to their customers is because Comdivision is a pure-play VMware partner.

“We’re a 100 percent VMware-only partner. So we are basically not that much of a threat to these partners because we are not going to sell any of these customers hardware,” said Sandfort.

Comdivision doesn’t have the broad vendor portfolio offerings to take business away from these former VMware partners they are working with.

“We are not going to sell any of these customers Microsoft. We are not going to sell any of these customers Veeam or anything like that because we are only doing VMware,” said Sandfort. “They’re looking for a partner to work collaboratively with who is not being a threat for them to also take over their Microsoft and other businesses.”

Clients Of All Sizes Seeing The ‘Value’ In VMware Cloud Foundation

One major shakeup Broadcom has implemented since taking over VMware was reducing VMware’s portfolio of thousands of point products into a small handful of end-to-end platforms.

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) is Broadcom’s flagship offering that is a full-stack Infrastructure as-a-Service private cloud platform that provides networking, software-defined compute, storage, Kubernetes, security and management. VCF also includes a slew of automation and AI features all wrapped up as a single SKU to simplify full-stack deployment.

Since VCF is a complete private cloud platform, the price tag for VCF is significantly higher for customers that were used to buying just siloed VMware point products.

However, Sandfort said businesses are starting to fully understand the true value of VCF.

“What we currently see out there in the market is that—especially when it comes to medium-size and large enterprises but also an increasing amount of small businesses—people see the value of running and operating VCF or VVF [VMware vSphere Foundation],” he said.

Businesses of all shapes and sizes are seeing the power and potential of VCF as a one-stop-shop solution that can replace sometimes dozens of products from other vendors, he added.

“People are starting to understand that VCF or VVF can basically replace not only the hypervisor but other silos they had before like storage, networking, etc.,” Sandfort said. “People really see [the value] of having more eggs in one basket. Especially in these times where one of the biggest challenges for many corporations is also finding the right staffing, customers are utilizing VCF against that.”

This month, VMware launched the new VCF version 9.1, which seeks to reduce customer costs even further around hardware, storage, Kubernetes and more with new features and tools inside.