The VCE coalition: what's in it for the channel 3 November, 2009 By Mark Cox

PromoPipeline Exclusive Channel Promotions Find Out How You Can Make Money Today! ENROLL FREE! >> Service Provider - Partner of Today (not the Future) for VMware Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Seven Signs VMware is Doubling Down its Bet on SMB: Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Targeting Kindergartners? Social Media Marketing Reaches an All-Time High (or Low) Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Is 2012 the Year of "Deal Registrations"? Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Distributors Cloud Services Become a Reality Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting

But how exactly does the channel fit in?

Cisco's CEO, John Chambers, stressed that partners will make most of the money from the Vblock Infrastructure Packages.

"Think of these as the onramps for service providers, in ways that allow our partners to focus on the application side or the solution side or building the clouds themselves. They make this much more open an architecture. The open architecture enables partners, and the partners will get most of the revenue," Chambers said.

As the coalition moves forward, it is fairly clear that the channel is slated to play a significant role. But as the coalition kicks off, that role in delivering the Vblock Packages to customers is limited to a fairly small number of partners. Six large system integrators are on board at launch: Accenture, Capgemini, CSC, Lockheed Martin, Tata Consulting Services, and Wipro. Six large telecom service providers are there as well. And there are nine channel partners -- BlueWater Communications Group, CDW, CTI, Dimension Data, Flextel, Forsythe, FusionStorm, Presidio, and World Wide Technology.

The initial number of qualified partners is limited because it required partners who were fully qualified on the systems from all three vendors, said Edison Peres, SVP, Worldwide Channels GTM, Cisco.

"The targeted partners needed to be able to deliver on each of the three, so the initial list is the partners certified by all three who said they wanted to build an active practise around these packages," Peres said.

Peres said that the number of qualified partners will be broadened out as the coalition moves forward.

"The Vblocks are reference architectures, they are not SKUs," he said. "To make them come to life, you have to buy the products, and the partners make those products come to life. We will be more aggressive in enabling them going forward."

Right now, certification is through all three vendors, separately, but that may change

"The certifications now are separate, but we are starting to talk about in Phase Two developing an integrated approach," Peres said.

"We are working as diligently as possible to make this a seamless experience for partners, but no specific timetable for this has been established," said Mitch Breen, Senior Vice President, Global Channel Strategy and Sales, at EMC.

Initial partner involvement is also limited because what will likely prove to be the most attractive solution for the channel, the entry-level Vblock 0, which supports between 300 and 800 virtual machines, won't be on the market until 2010.

"We are in the final releases of validation of architecture and testing with the Vblock 0," Breen said. "We expect it will be the sweet spot of our partner ecosystem."