High Growth, Low Competition - The Perfect Storm
The opportunity for Solution Providers to use virtualization to unleash the under-utilized network horsepower of their mid-market and SMB customers is signifi cant and growing, according to fi ndings from a recent CMP Channel Virtualization Study. At the same time, changes being introduced to the Channel partner programs of leading virtualization vendors such as VMware can help build a robust virtualization practice and make doing business with existing customers more lucrative.

Virtualization essentially lets one computer do the job of multiple computers, by sharing the resources of a single computer across multiple environments. Virtual servers and virtual desktops lets you host multiple operating systems and multiple applications locally and in remote locations, freeing you from physical and geographical limitations. In addition to energy savings and lower capital expenses due to more efficient use of your hardware resources, you get high availability of resources, better desktop management, increased security, and improved disaster recovery processes when you build a virtual infrastructure.

The trend towards the adoption of virtualization as a mid-market solution is clearly in full swing, according to the study. Solution Providers typically cater to mid-market and SMB customers, and nearly half of all surveyed already sell or recommend virtualization products today, while about 11 percent* plan to do so in the next 12 months, according to the study. The reason for this embrace of virtualization is simple. As the industry witnesses an explosive need for server, storage and other IT resources, smaller companies now also face the need to tame their unruly IT networks in a costeffective, secure and efficient fashion.

The Right Partnerships Build Profits
Customers are getting hip to this trend. About 10 percent of Solution Providers surveyed said their customers had already begun asking for virtualization by name. Solution Providers should be ready when customers ask about how virtualization can help their business.

To help Solution Providers accelerate their virtualization practices, VMware is introducing enhancements to its VMware VIP Partner Program. The changes include benefit enhancements for partners participating in the "advantage +" program, additional training options to build their VMware virtualization expertise, and new and improved marketing tools to expand their VMware virtualization opportunities and meet the needs of customers of all sizes.

Within advantage+ there are several innovative program elements that deliver incentives for closing VMware business:

newaccount+: rewards your business when you bring new customers to VMware.

oppreg+: rewards your business when you bring in new opportunities for existing customers and by demonstrating value selling.

influence+: rewards partners who create a new opportunity, register it with VMware and demonstrate that they have provided "value selling" on that particular deal, even though the opportunity is fulfilled by another VMware partner. These new partner initiatives from VMware make it easier than ever for Solution Providers to gain the training and certifications needed to put them on track to effectively deliver highly reliable virtualization solutions into their customers' industry-standard computing environment. Higher margins, more business, better solutions. That's where VMware wants to take you.

Virtualization not only lowers the long-term costs associated with growing and maintaining an IT environment, it also enables higher levels of protection for business-critical systems and data, optimizes technology assets, and increases the productivity of IT staff. Virtualization centralizes the management of disparate systems, consolidating multiple server, storage and network consoles into single management interfaces. Virtualization is also a Green Technology, one that helps lower the energy consumption and costs of cooling and powering servers by reducing the number of server and storage arrays needed as a business grows.

Diverse opportunities to introduce virtualization at multiple levelsbe it servers, storage, network, or even desktop virtualization - present strong upsell opportunities for Solution Providers. To this end, a full 60 percent of Solution Providers who already sell virtualization in some form said they plan to add new virtualization capabilities in the next 12 months. Practically every form of virtualization is rapidly taking off in the Channel. For example, over 50 percent of the Solution Providers already offer - or plan to offer in the next 12 months - virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) products. Asked the same about storage virtualization, 48 percent said they sold or planed to sell it in the next 12 months.

The mid-market appears to be a particular sweet spot to server virtualization. Businesses with between 100 and 499 employees provide the greatest growth potential for sales of server virtualization solutions in the next 12-18 months, according to the survey.

As capacity is optimized, the advantages of virtualization multiply. Capabilities such as instant provisioning, enable Solution Providers to create test and development staging environments without additional hardware. By tearing down the individual organizations silos separating stand-alone storage and server resources, business can leverage virtualization in a way that delivers dynamic allocation of IT resources to better respond to changing business conditions. Virtualization addresses the one concern on the mind of every IT organization today: How to optimize network availability and ensure disaster recovery.

With the right partner, Solution Providers today are positioned to take advantage of the huge opportunity that virtualization presents as a long-term IT solution that can grow along with their customers - one that packs significant upsell opportunity for the Channel as trusted advisors to the booming SMB & Mid market.