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LAS VEGAS VMware welcomed a record 4,300 resellers, integators and various other business partners to its global-scope Partner Exchange 2012 event Feb. 14.
The number of attendees at the Venetian Hotel was up 20 percent from 2011 and an eye-opening 120 percent from 2010clear indicators that interest in sales of data center, desktop, and other types of IT virtualization products and services continues to quickly ramp up in the channel sector.
“In fact, about 85 percent of everything we sell at VMware comes as a result of the channel,” Scott Aronson, who leads the company’s global channel, strategic alliance and service provider relationships, told opening general session attendees.
VMware recapped a highly successful 2011, hauling in $3.77 billion in revenueup markedly from $2.9 billion the previous year; reaching the 50,000-partner and 350,000-customer levels; and determining that 95 percent of enterprise data centers have at least one instance of a VMware software product.
If that isn’t market dominance, then somebody’s numbers are a bit off. If that isn’t impressive enough, then consider the projection by Gartner that the global private cloud infrastructure market will balloon to a whopping $41.5 billion by 2015.
Aronson, CEO Paul Maritz and CTO Steve Herrod all told attendees during their morning keynotes that VMware intends to earn the lion’s share of all that budget during the next three years.
VMware didn’t announce any new products or services at the event, focusing instead on channel-related news. This included the announcement of new competitancy tracks in Virtualization of Business-Critical Applications; infrastructure as a service (IaaS); and management of the vCenter Operations Management Suite.