Pat Gelsinger On AWS Partnership, Sales Strategy And Cloud Future

Pat Gelsinger says VMware will continue to double down on selling VMware Cloud on AWS via Amazon’s direct sale force.

“Amazon is now scaling their dedicated sales force [around VMware Cloud on AWS],” said VMware CEO Gelsinger during Citi’s 2020 Global Technology Virtual Conference last week. “So we have a dedicated sales force, Amazon has a dedicated sales force, and they’re now partnering at scale. I would say this is really starting to generate shared momentum in the marketplace.”

Gelsinger went on to say that he and AWS CEO Andy Jassy even conduct joint sales calls together. “And when two CEOs are joining a sales call, trust me, everybody in the sales force hears about it – big opportunities that we’re executing together,” he said.

Gelsinger’s comments come as several large VMware partners told CRN that multi-million VMware Cloud on AWS, known as VMC, deals that were channel-led have been swooped up by AWS direct sales team in the eleventh hour.

The crux of the channel issue is that AWS, considered another “reseller” by VMware, is able to leverage its private Enterprise Discount Program (EDP) as a financial weapon when selling VMC that the channel simply cannot match. EDP provides a discount to customers in exchange for a prepaid, annual consumption commitment.

“Big cloud customers are very favorable to taking their VMC service through the Amazon channel and through the Amazon EDP agreements, because it helps them for all of their cloud uses and billing to lower the cost and increase higher discounts sooner,” said Gelsinger. “So a lot of momentum to that piece of it, and we’re building out more services with them.”

CRN breaks down the six boldest statements Gelsinger made regarding his firm’s Amazon partnership, VMC and VMware’s go-to-market strategy ahead with Microsoft and Google.