Can VMware Become a Major Partner in Enterprise Software?

Legacy VARs –  Its VAR/solution provider audience is pretty loyal, but they aren’t investing in skills beyond vSphere anywhere near fast enough to support the growth the company needs. Because many of these partners haven’t deeply invested yet in desktop virtualization or cross-platform systems management (at least not with VMware’s products), they are overly dependent on the margins from server virtualization, which has become highly commoditized (thanks to more than a little help from Oracle and Microsoft!).

Big SIs and Outsourcers – VMware now has a broad solution set for large enterprise companies building private clouds and custom apps. But, its engagement with global SIs and outsourcers is very new and not well-resourced at the field level. Much like many engineering-driven cultures, the company doesn’t broadly understand a services-led sales strategy, business process re-engineering or long sales cycles. The big SIs clearly see the services opportunity, but aren’t yet getting the scale of enablement and field teaming they need to jumpstart their cloud practices.

ISVs –  VMware’s open source, multicloud strategy sounds good in slideware. But, much of its software development vision is for new, built-for-the-cloud apps. However, its application modernization evangelism flies in the face of many legacy ISVs that are in no hurry to modernize their applications and the big SIs with longstanding Siebel, SAP (NYSE: SAP) and Oracle practices. Neither is pushing its customers to shut down or port over those cash-cow legacy apps. The SpringSource developer community has to get connected to at least the older custom Java apps already running in most big enterprise companies, let alone to the legacy apps written for every flavor of Unix and mainframe that are still chugging away in the back office.

Service Providers and MSPs –  VMware has done a good job here courting these IT-as-a-service innovators and has a pretty broad community. But, rather than just continuing to sell perpetual licenses here, it has to seriously ramp its efforts to help these companies build downstream channels of ISVs or resellers of their own. How service providers can make money building services around the vFabric application development platform and the vCloud Suite is not all that clear or prescriptive, at least not yet.