Revamping on the Cards

size="4">VMware
is all set to revamp its web portal. The new incorporation will
enable effective management of product licenses and provide support
at a customer account level instead of the present email domain
structure. The customers and partners can reap benefits of this
overhaul from mid-2012.

size="4">This
portal as mentioned by VMware will help with license keys and support
contracts will no longer be 'owned' by the individual who placed
the order, but by the organization. This means partners will be able
to manage product license keys and support at a customer account
level instead of the current email domain structure. According to VM
Ware, this will benefit to improve organization for products and
support, complete visibility into purchases and support contract
status, unified visibility into license keys and support requests,
simplified license key management using folders to organize license
keys, accelerated installations through intuitive organization of
product downloads and trials; and flexible user permission model,
allowing customers to assign specific actions to specific
individuals. A video in the portal says, “We are updating our
portal and making it easier to get the task you need to get done. My
VMware is the new integrated experience to help you manage your
VMware products and services. You will have the flexibility to manage
the information in the way you want.”

size="4">Speaking
to DQ Channels, Ganesan Arumugam, director channel and alliances,
VMware India says, “To put it simply, the upcoming portal will be
fully automated and service itself for licenses, that will add a lot
of value to the partners and customers, because through this they
will be able to view all the licenses which they have from VMware. So
license management becomes much easier from the customer's point of
view. Now partners will be able to see the licenses they have bought
and therefore they will be able to service their customers in a
better way. Now a days it is a long process in terms of license
management but will be soon simplified after the new web portal.”

size="4">Arumugam
further adds, “One advantage will be that the partners now will be
able to access on their customer's behalf and another advantage
will be that the partners can also see the inventory of the licenses;
which they can upsell and cross sell. For example if any customer has
got enough number of vSphere licenses, now partners can go and sell
management solutions to them, they can look for increasing their
virtualization adoption as well see the timeliness for their
customers to go for private cloud.” VMware India plans to launch
the portal simultaneously in India too. The time frame has not yet
been finalized. For educating the partners, VMware structures their
partner enablement program at the start of every quarter ie in the
first two weeks. The company goes to all their partners and talk to
partners on the enablement of latest offerings on the latest
products. Manas Sinha, senior VP, Targus Technologies said, “As of
now we did not find any discrep- ancy as far as vSphere and its
related components are concerned in terms of licensing, but the new
portal will definitely help us to focus on other VMware products
which we were not focusing on earlier.”

size="4">However,
it seems that VMware channel partners are not aware of it. DQ
Channels asked 3 basic questions regarding licensing of the products
but partners had no clue as of now. It seems that the launch of 'My
VMware' is just in the processing phase and the company itself has
not officially spoken anything on this issue to their partners. Jerry
Karivelithara, director, servers and storage, Nortech Infonet says,
“We have not been officially informed about anything on the portal
as of now. I spoke to VMware people but they themselves are not aware
of it as of now.” Ganesh Mahabala of Value Point Systems denied
commenting anything officially on this issue. Similarly Durganadh K
Venkata of Locuz Enterprise solutions seemed unaware of the
development from VMware's side as of now.