AUTHOR: Eric Ledyard
<< NOTE: moved from previous blog >>
It is my 4th full week of getting indoctrinated into the Vision Program within VMware and I wanted to do a write-up to explain what it is we do, how it is we do it, and why we do it. Effectively, we are a new venture for VMware that is focused heavily on changing the way the VMware field sales team works with strategic accounts through the use of ‘value engineering’. Our mission statement is as follows:
To collaboratively develop an actionable Cloud strategy, business case, and execution plan through clear alignment to the customers’ goals and objectives.
The key differentiator for our group is that we are strategic in nature and not transactional. Our execution is focused on the top strategic VMware customers and the team we have is full of senior-level people who have been in strategic leadership roles before within corporate IT. Within the group, we have two distinct roles: Business Solutions Strategists (BSS) and Business Solutions Architects (BSA). The BSS group are folks that used to be CIO’s and CTO’s of companies themselves and understand people, process, and politics of corporate IT organizations and how to engage with senior management teams to define the strategic direction of their own companies. The BSA’s are the senior architects that define the strategic technology roadmap for the organization and ties together the products and services that are needed to transform the IT organization. The BSA aligns products and services to a roadmap that breaks out strategic IT initiatives and then outlines the work stream and the work packages for each.
There are multiple key strategies that we execute on today. Some examples of these are: Optimizing your virtual datacenter, Enterprise management, Application modernization, Virtual End User Computing, and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to name a few. Each of these has a distinct work stream associated with it and within each work stream we define a work package to complete each step of the stream.
The work streams break out all the logical steps for how an organization needs to address each strategic initiative and assigns work that needs to be done for each. We take these and shift each tab out into a timeline that meets the project goals of the teams we interview during our engagement. The work package is a visual way for us (the BSA’s) to assign products and services (VMware or other) to each work stream component. This acts as a high-level roadmap for how the organization will transition their environment from where they are to where they want to be.
Using these tools, the Vision Program provides strategic guidance to large customers to get them to realize the goal of VMware to become an IT transformation company in the future. One of the best quotes that I have heard was: “You are the leading edge of the ‘Cloud Company’.” Our goal is to tie together the field sales teams, the SME’s, the PSO team, and the customer’s entire IT management team and provide an actionable approach to moving to a cloud IT organization. We truly believe this is the future of VMware as a company and how we will grow to being seen as what we truly are, rather than just a virtualization company.
