Posted by Brian Forbes, VMware, Sr. Director
Alliance Marketing and Julie Eades,
VMware, VP of Global SMB Marketing
Brian Forbes: VMware traditionally has focused on enterprise software solutions. Why the focus now on SMB customers?
Julie Eades: It is certainly the perception that we are an enterprise software company, but we have a very strong SMB customer base that is growing year-over-year. The reason? Our solutions benefit both large and small companies alike. Companies of all sizes can realize the same cost savings and business agility from implementing VMware solutions. Whether a large organization or a growing startup, companies are looking to lower costs, increase IT flexibility and grow without complexity while ensuring that their IT environments and businesses run without any downtime, even when disaster strikes.
With the focus on SMB, VMware can address the specific evolving needs of these customers by delivering a comprehensive suite of solutions tailored for SMB customers and channels. Our ultimate vision is to offer our partner community a simple way to provide IT services to their SMB customers and at the same time make IT more easily consumable so that SMBs can concentrate on growing their businesses instead of worrying about how IT works!
Forbes: What are the two main reasons why an SMB should look to VMware for their virtualization and cloud computing needs?
Eades: Just two? That is tough…each customer situation is unique, but if I had to narrow it down I would say that customers who choose VMware work with the proven market leader in virtualization and enjoy the benefits associated with the industry’s most mature and reliable technology. And with virtualization as a foundation to your cloud, many of the leading public cloud service providers run on VMware.
In addition, VMware delivers a range of virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions designed to meet the unique needs of small and midsize businesses.
But I don’t want to stop there. Given the focus of this blog, I want to highlight our partners. We have the most knowledgeable partner ecosystem with specializations in infrastructure virtualization, business continuity and desktop virtualization to help customers of all types and sizes.
Forbes: Is the strong performance and feature benefits associated with VMware products really required for a small or midsize business?
Eades: What we find is that just because a business is small or midsize, doesn’t mean they want to settle when it comes to mission critical business systems. In fact, we see even very small businesses (1-99 employees) upgrading from our entry-level products, Essentials or Essentials+, to enterprise suites.
Businesses today, including SMBs, see technology as a business differentiator. This is especially true within certain industries, like hi-tech, business services, education and finance. Today’s SMBs have similar needs as enterprise customers. They are just as concerned about availability, performance, security, manageability and scalability as their larger peers, and are looking for the same benefits.
That said, with our added focus on SMB, we are working with our customers and partners to further define the IT needs and characteristics of SMBs and to create, package and deliver the right solutions for their business.
Forbes: Where are you seeing SMBs adopting cloud computing?
Eades: Several SMB studies from various sources such as CompTIA, a non-profit trade association advancing the global interests of IT professionals and companies, as well as analyst firms have shown that of the SMBs who have adopted or plan to adopt cloud, the most common cloud services are storage/backup, email, document management and collaboration. And the most cited benefit of a cloud solution is cost and flexibility.
This aligns with our expectation that SMBs are looking to external service providers for cloud services and also rapidly adopting SaaS as their initial deployment. As they gain more confidence in cloud, we expect further expansion into available services.
Forbes: What does VMware have planned in 2012 specifically for the SMB customer base and how do our Alliances impact this?
Eades: We have many good things in store around the globe for the SMB customer base, starting with several product promotions in February. We also have an exciting new marketing campaign that will hit all major markets in Q1 called “The Real World Advantage Campaign”. Several channel and alliance partners have customized the campaign for their own use and more intend to do the same.
In Q2 our VMware Forums (vForum) kick off in the Americas and EMEA regions – these are large, one day, free events where companies can come and learn about virtualization and cloud computing. SMB IT teams can access real technology in the vForum hands-on labs and speak to experts at the VMware booth.
Then in Q3 San Francisco hosts VMworld, where we expect almost 20,000 attendees and we always see a large SMB contingent participate. And finally in Q4, Barcelona hosts VMworld Europe followed closely by the APJ Forums, where we continue to be impressed by the number of attendees learning about VMware technology.
Everything I have just mentioned provides opportunities for our Alliance partners. They can join our events, run joint campaigns and augment our promotions. Our partner ecosystem is incredibly important to us at VMware and we look forward to continuing our close relationship with our alliance community in 2012.
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