VMware Touts Solution Enablement Toolkits to Partners

Two years after rolling out its Solution Enablement Toolkits (SETs), virtualization kingpin VMware (NYSE: VMW) is again touting to partners the benefits of leveraging the collections of tools, templates and assets as a vehicle to boost sales and margins.

SETs are building blocks put together by VMware professional services, sales engineers, solutions teams and product marketing, designed to help channel partners better package their services with hardware and licensing in solutions delivered to end customers. The idea is to give partners a lever to differentiate themselves, accelerate growth, increase deal sizes and services margins. SETs are made available to partners that have completed the associated Solution Competencies.

“Our partners use Solution Enablement Toolkits to help them package up their own services and solutions and accelerate the go-to-market process in any one solution space,” said Dave Forsch, VMware director of partner solutions in a blog post.

Forsch described the positive sales results partners are achieving by using the SETs. “SETs are a benefit of achieving a solution competency,” he said. “When you achieve a solution competency it actually unlocks a library of SETs associated with that competency.”

With two years of data to evaluate the effectiveness of the SETs, VMware has been able to measure the impact to the partner’s business, Forsch said. The company determined that partners leveraging SETs are “experiencing twice the growth rate” in comparison with partners not using the kits. Interestingly, that figure matches results of the initial set of partners serving as a test group for the development and deployment of SETs in 2010, according to the company.

In noting that “we continue to get great positive comments [and] suggestions for improvements,” Forsch pointed to a “key partner,” which he didn’t identify, that described the offering as helping them “package up our services so they’re more meaningful to the customer.” It shows, Forsch said, how partners can leverage SETs to “raise their game and grow their business.”

VMware is offering SETs free of charge to partners with Solution Competencies, available at the vendor’s Partner Central web site.