CloudHealth partner programme set for 2020 re-launch

CloudHealth has revealed plans for a major overhaul of its partner programme next year, with the announcement following the cloud services specialist’s acquisition by VMware in October 2018.

The re-launch in February 2020 will see the introduction of a tiered programme structure tied to certification, as well as partner revenue, growth and customer retention, said Bob Kilbride, senior director of global channel sales at CloudHealth.

Kilbride said the acquisition by VMware “opens up a whole host of new partner opportunities and prospects” for existing partners of the Boston-based firm, which provides services around cloud cost management, governance, automation, security and performance.

The exec told MicroScope that CloudHealth is currently prepping its partners for re-categorisation in the new programme, with a focus on formalising its current tiered structure.

“We’re going to be heavily engaged with VMware partners [in the VMware Cloud Provider Programme – VCCP] in the next fiscal year, for sure,” said Kilbride.

“For existing CloudHealth partners, there will be the opportunity for additional VMware solutions that will be integrated into the CloudHealth platform. There’ll also be the opportunity for partners to be VCCP as partners as well. It’ll work both ways.”

Despite merging the two company’s indirect sales channels, Kilbride doesn’t anticipate any skirmishes between partners.

“The number of our partners will increase exponentially, and the great thing is we’re not a community of resellers, we’re a community for service providers, and each one can provide CloudHealth as part of their own unique cloud offering. So even though we’re going to have a lot more partners than we did, we still don’t expect a tremendous amount of conflict,” he said.

Kilbride pointed out that both the main and partner-version of the CloudHealth platform will remain the same, but there will be accelerated roadmap with additional functionality, and will continue to run autonomously.

Kilbride said a greater percentage of CloudHealth’s business goes through partners in the UK compared with North America. He added that the firm will continue to invest in enablement for partners in 2019, with a focus on multicloud and, in particular, Microsoft Azure.

Most of CloudHealth’s business today is Amazon Web Services (AWS), but Kilbride said: “Azure will be a big focus for us in the next year. Many of our partners are multicloud – which is a very real trend that will continue – and they’re going to look for a platform that can support that true hybrid environment.”