Broadcom’s VMware overhaul has done more than give competitors customer opportunities. The fallout has also pushed channel partners to reassess the economics, flexibility and vendor relationships underpinning virtualization. VMware rival Virtuozzo aims to capitalize on both trends with a revamped partner program.
“Partners want more predictability and more control over how they build their business,” Roy Wttewaall, senior director of global partnerships at Virtuozzo, told Channel Dive. “They want clear economics and strong technology, but they also want a vendor that understands their business model and is accessible when they need support.”
Launched Oct. 1, V/Partner includes tracks for distributors, resellers, service providers and technology partners.
“We have learned a lot from what partners valued in other partner programs across the industry,” Wttewaall said. “With V/Partner, we have taken those lessons and built on them, retaining the elements partners tell us work well while adding closer engagement, a more personalized approach and greater flexibility.”
The program rewards partners as they develop Virtuozzo capabilities, complete certifications, generate customer demand and expand their business. Incentives include discounts, rebates and referral fees based on partner type and level.
Qualifying partners can participate in roadmap discussions and receive early access to new functionality, an advantage Virtuozzo is positioning as part of a more direct relationship with the vendor.
“That gives them a meaningful voice in how the platform develops based on the customer requirements they see in the market,” Wttewaall said.
Meanwhile, partner enablement includes V/Partner Academy training and certification, demo licenses and access to pre-sales and technical support. Virtuozzo also embedded resources spanning partner visibility, co-marketing, market development funds and joint go-to-market support to help partners grow.
Partners have told Virtuozzo they want closer contact with channel, pre-sales, engineering and product teams, according to Wttewaall.
“Virtuozzo wants to give partners a proven technology platform, commercial and technical benefits that help them differentiate, and, importantly, a partner they can trust for the long term,” he said.
Virtuozzo did not disclose specific margin levels, minimum commitments or deal-protection terms in response to Channel Dive’s questions. The company does, however, identify renewal continuity alongside commercial incentives and access to technical and business expertise as a core part of the program.
A flexible model
A key aspect of V/Partner is partner designation. Instead of lumping everyone into a category, the vendor considers each applicant on an individual basis.
“There isn't a single predefined route that every partner has to fit into,” Wttewaall said. “We start by understanding the partner's business: how they go to market, the customers they serve, their technical capabilities, the services they want to build or sell, and how they want to work with Virtuozzo.”
From there, Virtuozzo and the partner agree to the category and most appropriate selling path, or what the company calls a “commercial route.” That approach allows the vendor and the partner to work together “in a way that makes sense for that partner's business model and route to market, rather than asking the partner to adapt its business to a rigid program structure,” Wttewaall said.
That’s especially important for service providers, in Virtuozzo’s view. Infrastructure economics and operating models can vary widely among partners, Wttewaall said.
Beyond hypervisors
As Broadcom axed VMware partners, changed program requirements and mandated product bundling, managed service providers have found themselves looking for alternatives to VMware Cloud Director.
Virtuozzo is one option, but Wttewaall said the intent is not to re-create VMware Cloud Director. Rather, he said, the key difference comes down to efficiency. Capabilities such as native multi-tenancy, tenant isolation, virtual networking, workload templates and kubernetes are embedded in the platform.
“These capabilities are integrated across compute, storage and networking, reducing the number of separate products, licenses and management layers a provider needs,” Wttewaall explained, noting that resource efficiency and high workload density help lower infrastructure cost per workload.
“We don’t see this simply as replacing one management layer with another,” Wttewaall said. “It is an opportunity to move toward a simpler infrastructure model designed around the operational and commercial realities of delivering multi-tenant cloud services.”
Partners can use Virtuozzo for customer-owned private infrastructure or as the foundation for cloud, managed infrastructure and AI services. That includes deployments in regional data centers and on-premises environments as customers require data locality, infrastructure control and digital sovereignty.
An inflection point
V/Partner arrives at a consequential juncture in the VMware transition. Broadcom slashed VMware’s service-provider ranks, reshaped program requirements and bundled products, driving customers and partners to weigh migration options.
Customers that initially absorbed higher costs, remained tied to existing contracts or delayed migration decisions are moving further into evaluation and implementation cycles.
Virtuozzo does not expect organizations to overhaul their VMware environments all at once. Instead, V/Partner arrives as more end users consider phased exits and mixed infrastructure environments.
“In the near term, we expect many projects to begin as mixed environments and phased migrations,” Wttewaall said. “Partners are not going to move every customer overnight, and we are not asking them to. Many will start with new workloads or selected customer environments and expand as hardware is refreshed, or the economics justify further migration.”
Wttewaall emphasized that Virtuozzo does not claim to offer a direct one-to-one VMware equivalent.
“For many customers, the objective isn't feature parity for its own sake,” Wttewaall said. “It is retaining the functionality their workloads require while reducing cost and complexity.”
For service providers whose clients depend on smooth, reliable operating capacity, that’s particularly crucial.
“The objective is to minimize disruption while achieving the best technical and commercial outcome for the partner and its customers,” Wttewaall said. “Every migration is also a chance to innovate and grow.”
The strategy points to the larger opportunity Virtuozzo sees in V/Partner. Changing cloud economics, data-sovereignty concerns and disruption to long-standing vendor and partner relationships are prompting partners to reconsider not only which infrastructure they run, but how much control they have over the economics of their services and the vendors behind them.
The reevaluation process, Wttewaall added, requires “more than finding an alternative hypervisor.”
