Without our partners, it’s fair to say that we would not have enjoyed the success we’ve had over the last twenty years. Across the world, the service providers, resellers, distributors and other partners VMware works with are critical to both our success and our customers’ ability to deploy the digital foundation they need to transform their operations.
In the UK and Ireland, we like to recognise that vital work in a number of ways – one of which is the Partner Recognition dinner. A night of toasting success and celebrating the outstanding contributions of our local partner ecosystem, our judges have the unenviable task of selecting winners across eight categories.
Last night 88 people from 15 companies joining us at The Curtain in London for the event.
Each of our winners were chosen from strong shortlists, which in turn were picked from an array of businesses that have all had sparkling results in the past year.
It was a fitting occasion for our first ever individual award as well, with Alanzo Blackstock, director of VMware UK&I’s partner organisation, presenting the VMware Ambassador of the Year to Jacques Tibbels, VMware Business Manager at Softcat. Jacques won in recognition of his commitment to driving the VMware agenda within Softcat, building exceptional relationships within our sales community and generally going above and beyond our expectations. The impact can be seen both in Softcat’s own revenue growth and Jacques’ role in identifying, progressing and closing significant deals in our Commercial and Enterprise business in the last year.
The Public Sector Partner of the Year was CDW. It was chosen for its long-held relationships across the public sector, which it has combined with a unique go to market proposition which incorporates Workspace ONE and software-defined-datacenter solutions such as Cloud Foundation. The results speak for themselves – 235% year-on-year growth across the VMware public sector business.
Insight was named the VMware Marketing Campaign of the Year winner, thanks to its ability to generate outstanding return on investment with an annual pipeline of $8 million. It did this through its consistent adoption of the partner marketing catalogue to leverage integrated campaigns across our entire portfolio. This was achieved with proactive planning, collaboration and initiative to combine digital, social, C-suite events and VMworld Europe.
Taking home the crown of VMware Systems Integrator of the Year was Fujitsu. A leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for managed workplace services, Fujitsu shares VMware’s core values, including a commitment to diversity and inclusiveness. It was the first to deliver VMware Cloud on AWS from a cloud based in the UK, and has combined all this to create a business plan focused on winning large digital transformation projects across public and private sectors. Spanning cloud, digital workspace and network and security, this has resulted in a staggering 55% year-on-year growth of VCPP bookings and new customers for both itself and VMware.
In the Customer Story of the Year category, Xtravirt was picked out thanks to its work with British Heart Foundation, in which it led a greenfield transformation across two datacenters. In doing so, it ensured that IT is seen as a strategic enabler, rather than a hinderance to progress.
Arrow picked up Distributor of the Year, growing revenue by over 100%, including triple digit growth in NSX and vSAN, and maintaining excellent relationships with VMware across sales, technical and marketing. As prize announcer Julian Meredith, senior manager, UK&I partner organisation at VMware, said, Arrow really is “an extension of the VMware team”.
Cloud Provider Partner of the Year was Computacenter. One of the first UK&I VMware Cloud on AWS launch partners, Computacenter achieved master competencies for Cloud Management and Automation over the last year, and executed a variety of successful marketing campaigns, including C-level multi cloud events and thought leadership activity.
Secura was selected as the VCCP Cloud Provider Partner of the Year. This was thanks to 53% year-on-year licence growth, becoming the first UK-based MSP to use VMware vCloud availability technology in a commercial solution and investing heavily in Virtual Private Cloud and Virtual Networking and Security accreditations in their pre-sales teams.
Rising Star of the Year was presented to PFH. As Duncan Greenwood, the award’s presenter, highlighted, PFH “achieved 400% year-on-year growth”. This was on top of an ambitious plan to drive new growth in non-core technology, ensuring alignment across marketing, sales and technical teams, as well as delivering an ROI of 30:1 through quarterly marketing campaigns and regional workshops.
Finally, Jordi Ferrer, vice president and general manager for VMware in the UK and Ireland, presented Softcat with the coveted UK&I Partner of the Year award. It was a fitting win, with Softcat seeing 200% increase in revenue in Q419 on Q418, helping to achieve exceptional growth. It also adopted VMware Cloud on AWS as the foundation of its cloud strategy and using the full VMware SDDC suite in its own go-to-market propositions.
Congratulations to all our winners!
