Our focus, as VMware Technical Account Managers (TAMs), has always been to be our customers’ trusted advisors, and ensure that they are informed, optimal, operationally efficient, and helping them to do what they do best.
The VMware TAM Customer Roundtables are a series of exclusive, focused, information sessions, designed to deliver relevant, up-to-date content to our customers, by Subject Matter Experts, and arm customers with information they need. In normal circumstances, we would have been hosting these in person, across several cities around the world.
However, in these extraordinary times, the TAM Team, has adapted to our customers’ situation with a goal to ensure we still give our customers the VIP experience of being a TAM Customer. It is thus, with great pride, that we have kicked off a series of Virtual TAM Customer Roundtables, for our loyal TAM Customers. These sessions are tailored to be shorter, crisp, concise, to keep customers engaged, ask questions, and get them answered, all as a benefit of being a valuable TAM Customer.
The first session in the series was held for TAM METNA customers on 7th April, 2020 based on a topic of great relevance to all customers in the current world of remote working due to the pandemic. We were able to give our TAM Customers exclusive access to such a topic – VMware SDWAN by Velocloud. It was an excellent session delivered by Osama Freijeh, from our VeloCloud Business Unit, taking our customers right from the meaning of an SD-WAN to architecture, use cases, and value proposition. It was a highly interactive session with several questions which ensured that it was a remarkable success!
The next event in the series was held on 14th April, 2020 on what is probably the hottest topic right now – vSphere 7.0 : The platform for Modern Applications and Hybrid Cloud. This session was hosted by Sandeep Byreddy , Group Product Line Manager (vSphere), who, along with his team of Product Managers, covered the top highlights of vSphere 7.0. In closing we provided a special Q&A session dubbed “Ask the Product Manager”. This was a great opportunity for customers to interact directly with the Product Managers, by asking questions and providing feedback. With more than 60 questions answered, this highly interactive session was yet another unique advantage of being a VMware TAM Customer.
At the end of this unique session, we decided to take it up a notch, and published a Live Poll for the attendees to answer. The question was – “Based on the learnings from today’s session, what is your plan for upgrading to vSphere 7.0?” The result was an astounding 77% of the respondents planning for a vSphere 7.0 upgrade in the next 6 months.
As a continuation of the series of Virtual TAM Customer Roundtables, we have covered VMware Cloud Foundation 4.0 on 21st April 2020. Following on from vSphere 7, updates to VCF 4.0 was a natural choice to compliment the learnings from the previous week. Bozo Popovic, VSAN Specialist for METNA and Amitrajit Chatterjee, Solutions Specialist for VCF provided a customized experience, right from the basics up to an encapsulated view of the capabilities of VMware Cloud Foundation. The session delivered a great overview on how VCF is the key building block for VMware Tanzu Runtime Services and Hybrid Infrastructure Services, and provides the basis for the cloud infrastructure and container ecosystems to accelerate developer productivity.
The large number of questions received on Tanzu Kubernetes Grid and VCF capabilities clearly indicates that TAM customers are already on the transformation journey for modernizing applications. As yet another benefit, attendees of this session were provided an exclusive opportunity to sign up for vCF 4.0 Assessment, that will show technical and business advantages of running vCF 4.0 in their datacenter. Based on the interest in this topic, we have already scheduled a follow-up vTCR to deep-dive session and demo VCF!
In Summary
The feedback received on all the three vTCRs have been extremely encouraging, validating our decision to go virtual for the TAM Customer Roundtables, at this unique time. Based on the success of this program, we are planning to roll out vTCRs across EMEA for other topics of value to TAM Customers.
Please reach out to your VMware Technical Account Manager to get the list of vTCRs scheduled for your location and language. If you do not have VMware Technical Account Manager services , this is the time to reach out to your VMware Account team and request for the same. Please refer to our website for more details on VMware Technical Account Manager Services.
Stay well and stay safe!
Varghese Philipose currently works as Staff Technical Account Manager and is also a Member of CTO Ambassador Program within VMware. He joined VMware in 2012 as part of TAM METNA team based in Dubai. Varghese is a certified VCP on Datacenter Virtualization , Network Virtualization , Cloud Management & Desktop Virtualization. He is also certified as a specialist on vRealize Operations 2019 & Cloud Services Provider 2019.
