VMWARE
VMware | August 19, 2022
VMware, Inc. announced the next evolution of VMware Partner Connect – the company’s singular, unified, global partner program. Partner Connect’s new framework aligns to today’s cloud, services, and solutions-centric business models, and will help partners drive better business performance and profitability today while transforming their businesses for tomorrow. The evolved VMware Partner Connect program will deliver a flexible framework to support partners’ go to market with VMware, accelerate partner growth, and reward partners for the totality of their achievements and capabilities. VMware is delivering several immediate benefits, with additional capabilities and enhancements to be made available in the future.
VMware has identified three core profit drivers that show up consistently within the company’s most profitable partners: Services, Lifecycle Profit, and Stickiness. Each pillar is synergistic and interconnected to create revenue and profit opportunities. For partners focused on these three areas, the results are tangible. When comparing VMware’s most profitable partners to the worldwide averages: more than 80% of revenue from their VMware practice is driven from services (cloud, managed, professional); services profit is 1.5X higher; and professional service days revenue is more than 2X higher.(1)
“VMware has applied learnings from thousands of partners to drive the next evolution of Partner Connect and help partners perform while they transform. VMware is well positioned to help partners capture on the massive and growing opportunity in multi-cloud,” said Tracy-Ann Palmer, vice president, Partner Experience, Programs and Investments, VMware. “We now have one unified partner program that will be more flexible and efficient, with simpler paths to progression and more tools to help manage partners’ VMware business. We’re optimizing incentives and programs to help partners take their SaaS and subscription businesses to another level and capitalize on cloud-centric business models and economics.”
Elevated Partner Experience with a New Partner Connect Structure
With the next evolution of Partner Connect, VMware partners will benefit from a new flexible point system, simplified tiering, a business model orientation, and add more self-service and automation to further improve partner efficiency and profitability. Partner Connect will reward partners for different ways they create value, including both performance and capability activities. Progression in the program will be based on the new points system rather than a complex mix of IT pathways. Partners that progress to the new Pinnacle tier will experience even greater financial benefits and VMware engagement, including managed account coverage, joint business plan development, and access to big bets programs.
Additionally, Partner Connect will now support four different business models under a single program: Solution Services, Solution Builder, Cloud Solution Provider, and Solution Reseller. Creating this flexible, collaborative framework across these four business models enables VMware to unify support across all business models. VMware will deliver a new self-service dashboard that provides partners easy-to-access visibility into where they stand in the Partner Connect program. Partners will be able to better track their progression, incentives earned, competencies achieved and other valuable telemetry for managing their VMware business.
Accelerating Partner Business Transformation to SaaS, Services, and Solutions Selling
Customer Success practices are critical to helping customers realize continuous value from the cloud, SaaS, and subscription offerings. They are also a key component of the Lifecycle Services identified by VMware as a core profit driver. With the new Partner-Led Customer Success Specialization, partners now have three options to execute Customer Success. Partners can build their own comprehensive offering through the Specialization, collaborate with VMware on Customer Success activities, or resell VMware Success 360. These options enable partners to guide customers through all the stages of their multi-cloud journey with VMware solutions, while providing a consistent method of working with customers to help them continually realize value and achieve outcomes faster.
VMware has launched the Go-To-Market Play System (GPS) for VMware partners to meet the twin goals of delivering customer outcomes and partner profitability. Centered on transformational business challenges (Strategy Plays) and discrete focused IT solutions (Velocity Plays), GPS provides defined solutions with unified enablement and incentives to increase value and reach, as well as digital marketing support. With GPS for partners, VMware is transforming fragmented GTM programs into a unified approach directed at customer outcomes. These GPS plays are central to VMware’s outcome-oriented partner enablement and go-to-market evolution, driving end-to-end alignment beginning with partner capability development all the way to customer success.
VMware is now making the VMware Ignite program more broadly available to partners and has aligned it with the Go-To-Market Play System and partner-led services initiatives. VMware Ignite is a unique partner practice activation and development program featuring a rigorous, proven methodology providing structured development paths to build capabilities across technical, sales, services, and marketing functions; access to trainings and VMware experts to support sales and practice development; and a variety of development paths for new and committed partners and distributors.
The new VMware Ecosystem Solutions Partner Studio, which includes Solutions Lab and Solutions Hub, empowers partners to create and co-innovate on use-case-focused solutions to drive partner growth and global market differentiation. Solutions Lab is a facilitated co-innovation framework that helps partners take "Big Ideas" to market through guided assistance and support from VMware experts. With Solutions Lab, partners can deliver differentiated solutions that are repeatable and tailored for market-fit. Solutions Hub is an integrated digital self-service platform that streamlines the content creation, orchestration, and go-to-market process for partners’ solutions. Solutions Hub provides the digital tools to activate and publish curated solutions to VMware Marketplace today and additional third-party marketplaces in the future; measure pipeline, adoption, and penetration effectiveness; and accelerate time-to-market through automation.
“We love that this new points-based system for progression will recognize and reward partners like Insight for the results-based strategic growth we achieve with our shared customers, The recognition of our total achievements and capabilities as part of the VMware Partner Connect Program is a key driver for the continued investment in growing our VMware solutions business.”
Joyce Mullen, President and Chief Executive Officer, Insight Enterprises
About VMware
VMware is a leading provider of multi-cloud services for all apps, enabling digital innovation with enterprise control. As a trusted foundation to accelerate innovation, VMware software gives businesses the flexibility and choice they need to build the future. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is committed to building a better future through the company’s 2030 Agenda.
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VIRTUAL DESKTOP TOOLS
Fortinet | August 18, 2022
Fortinet a global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, today announced accelerated momentum of Fortinet Universal ZTNA and its ability to provide secure access for any user anywhere, whether they are remote or in the office. In fact, according to the latest Gartner report on enterprise network equipment market share, Fortinet is among the highest five global ZTNA vendors, with the fastest growing revenue of any vendor quarter-over-quarter from 4Q21-1Q22 and year-over-year from 1Q21-1Q22.1 Fortinet attributes this growth to its differentiated approach to ZTNA that supports secure application access for any user in any location, lower total cost of ownership, more seamless transition from VPN, and integration with the Fortinet Security Fabric, including Fortinet Secure SD-WAN.
ZTNA emerges as a top solution to implement Zero Trust principles
Organizations of all sizes are adopting Zero Trust as a corporate security strategy to enable digital acceleration, support remote and hybrid work, and reduce risk. According to Gartner, “60% of organizations will embrace Zero Trust as a starting point for security by 2025. More than half will fail to realize the benefits.”2 While transitioning from implicit trust to an explicit Zero Trust model is a top strategic concern, most organizations – over 80% according to a January 2022 Zero Trust survey from Fortinet – have found it difficult to execute. ZTNA has emerged as a top technology adopted by organizations as a first step to implementing zero trust principles to the corporate network.
Secure access for any user anywhere with Fortinet Universal ZTNA
At an increasing rate, organizations seeking to reduce their risk profile by building a zero trust architecture are turning to Fortinet Universal ZTNA. Key benefits of Fortinet’s solution include:
Consistent user experience in all work locations: Unlike cloud-only ZTNA, Fortinet Universal ZTNA delivers universal enforcement and the same user experience and security policies whether employees are located in densely populated offices, working remotely from home, or on the road.
Easy transition from VPN to ZTNA: Because VPN and ZTNA are managed by the same integrated client from Fortinet FortiClient organizations can transition application access seamlessly and at their own pace.
Existing Fortinet customers can immediately access ZTNA: Customers with existing FortiGate and FortiClient investments already have what they need to start applying Fortinet Universal ZTNA, an unlicensed feature.
ZTNA integrated with SD-WAN: Fortinet is the only vendor delivering ZTNA, SD-WAN, and enterprise-grade security that is integrated by a single operating system to more effectively support secure application access and application steering. All three SD-WAN for connectivity, ZTNA for secure access, and enterprise-grade security for traffic inspection and protection can be configured, orchestrated, and managed using the same centralized console.
Powerful networking and security convergence enabled by FortiOS everywhere: With Fortinet Universal ZTNA, Fortinet continues its legacy of delivering solutions that converge networking and security across its FortiGate platform. This convergence is powered by a single operating system—FortiOS—across all FortiGate form factors, including appliances, virtual machines, container solutions, SASE, and cloud deployments, to deliver coordinated security policies and consistent user experience.
“Fortinet Universal ZTNA delivers the most complete support for work-from-anywhere by delivering a universal approach to ZTNA that is consistent on-prem, in the cloud or as a service via SASE. Because cloud-only ZTNA solutions aren’t able to adequately support in-office workers and do so at a high cost, we’re seeing an increasing adoption of Fortinet Universal ZTNA to support today’s hybrid workforce.”
John Maddison, EVP of Products and CMO at Fortinet
Customer and Partner Validation of Fortinet Universal ZTNA
Organizations around the world rely on Fortinet Universal ZTNA to improve secure access to applications. Current Fortinet customers highlight the value of Fortinet’s offering:
“We are drawn to Fortinet Universal ZTNA because it will allow us to control application access for both on-campus and remote users. Having ZTNA on-prem and in the cloud means we’re able to better ensure our hybrid workforce has access to the applications they need while keeping our network more secure and easier to manage and control with less resources. The ability to use the Fortinet gear we already have to apply ZTNA enforcement is really appealing.”
- Tal David, Networking and Security Global Manager at Sapiens
“We’re currently migrating away from our existing VPN solution to FortiClient with connections through our FortiGates. Because Fortinet delivers several security capabilities from a single agent, we will be removing multiple other security agents. And because the ZTNA agent is a part of FortiClient, we will more easily control our shift from traditional VPN to an easier to manage ZTNA with a more seamless end-user experience. Being able to implement granular control of user-to-application access at our own pace will make a big difference in our plans to reduce security risk in our network.”
- JP DiCicco, IT Infrastructure Operations Manager at RES Americas
“We were really attracted to the Security Fabric concept of the Fortinet solution and how those products all talk to each other and react in real-time based on their observance of threats. That along with the common management interface for the whole suite of products made it a really easy decision for us. Because of the integrated nature of Fortinet’s products, adding on ZTNA to further improve our security posture with granular access control is seamless.”
- Colby Cousens, IT Director at Town of Danvers, Massachusetts
Fortinet’s partners are also leveraging Fortinet Universal ZTNA to support their customers:
“Fortinet’s dedication to consistently converging networking and security via FortiGate allows us to deliver immense value to customers. Having access to next-gen firewalling, SD-WAN and ZTNA all in one location and on one operating system that’s consistent whether on-prem, in the cloud, or as a service means easier management, better user experience, and a higher security posture.”
- Marc Jabian, Cybersecurity Practice Manager at Netsync
About Fortinet
Fortinet makes possible a digital world that we can always trust through its mission to protect people, devices, and data everywhere. This is why the world’s largest enterprises, service providers, and government organizations choose Fortinet to securely accelerate their digital journey. The Fortinet Security Fabric platform delivers broad, integrated, and automated protections across the entire digital attack surface, securing critical devices, data, applications, and connections from the data center to the cloud to the home office. Ranking #1 in the most security appliances shipped worldwide, more than 580,000 customers trust Fortinet to protect their businesses. And the Fortinet NSE Training Institute, an initiative of Fortinet’s Training Advancement Agenda (TAA), provides one of the largest and broadest training programs in the industry to make cyber training and new career opportunities available to everyone.
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VIRTUAL DESKTOP TOOLS
Verge.io | August 18, 2022
Verge.io, the company with a simpler way to virtualize data centers, has added significant new features to its Verge-OS software to give users the performance of GPUs as virtualized, shared resources. This creates a cost-effective, simple and flexible way to perform GPU-based machine learning, remote desktop and other compute-intensive workloads within an agile, scalable, secure Verge-OS virtual data center.
Verge-OS abstracts compute, network, and storage from commodity servers and creates pools of raw resources that are simple to run and manage, creating feature-rich infrastructures for environments and workloads like clustered HPC in universities, ultra-converged and hyperconverged enterprises, DevOps and Test/Dev, compliant medical and healthcare, remote and edge compute including VDI, and xSPs offering hosted services including private clouds.
Current methods for deploying GPUs systemwide are complex and expensive, especially for remote users. Rather than supplying GPUs throughout the organization, Verge.io allows users and applications with access to a virtual data center to share the computing resources of a single GPU-equipped server. Users/administrators can ‘pass through’ an installed GPU to a virtual data center by simply creating a virtual machine with access to that GPU and its resources.
Alternatively, Verge.io can manage the virtualization of the GPU and serve up vGPUs to virtual data centers. This allows organizations to easily manage vGPUs on the same platform as all other shared resources.
According to Darren Pulsipher, Chief Solution Architect of Public Sector at Intel, “The market is looking for simplicity, and Verge-OS is like an ‘Easy Button’ for creating a virtual cloud that is so much faster and easier to set up than a private cloud. With Verge-OS, my customers can migrate and manage their data centers anywhere and upgrade their hardware with zero downtime.”
“The ability to deploy GPU in a virtualized, converged environment, and access that performance as needed, even remotely, radically reduces the investment in hardware while simplifying management, Our users are increasingly needing GPU performance, from scientific research to machine learning, so vGPU and GPU Passthrough are simple ways to share and pool GPU resources as they do with the rest of their processing capabilities.”
Verge.io CEO Yan Ness
Verge-OS is an ultra-thin software—less than 300,000 lines of code—that is easy to install and scale on low-cost commodity hardware and self-manages based on AI/ML. A single license replaces separate hypervisor, networking, storage, data protection, and management tools to simplify operations and downsize complex technology stacks.
Secure virtual data centers based on Verge-OS include all enterprise data services like global deduplication, disaster recovery, continuous data protection, snapshots, long-distance synch, and auto-failover. They are ideal for creating honeypots, sandboxes, cyber ranges, air-gapped computing, and secure compliance enclaves to meet regulations such as HIPAA, CUI, SOX, NIST, and PCI. Nested multi-tenancy gives service providers, departmental enterprises, and campuses the ability to assign resources and services to groups and sub-groups.
Currently Verge.io supports NVIDIA Tesla and Ampere cards; additional licenses must be purchased for vGPU capability.
About Verge.io
Verge.io provides a simpler way to virtualize data centers and end IT infrastructure complexity. The company’s Verge OS software is the first and only fully integrated virtual cloud software stack to build, deploy and manage virtual data centers. Verge-OS delivers significant capital savings, increased operational efficiencies, reduced risk, and rapid scalability.
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