How do you think this change affects channel partners?
The worst-case scenario, I’m a partner who just sold a customer on a VMware implementation last week. Now all of a sudden, I’m looking at a completely different pricing model or a higher pricing model. Maybe that customer win was meant to be the initial deal of a project [that will have] 10 times as many site deployments. All of a sudden, the costs are radically changed.
Or if I’m a channel partner who deployed something in a customer five years ago, now when that renewal comes up, suddenly there’s new questions. There’s new questions that a customer and a partner need to ask. They’re saying, ‘OK, this is not just a run-of- the-mill, let’s re-up your license and get you a new version.’ This is a, ‘Hey, maybe we need to re-evaluate what makes the most sense for our environment.’
