Herve Renault, Head of Cloud Provider Business, EMEA, VMware

Undertaking any sort of digital journey is complex; as Hugo Harber, head of enterprise portfolio at Vodafone Business says, organisations have to “make sure [their] plan aligns with the business strategy, have clear goals and objectives, make sure the network and IT solution really underpin that plan, and make sure [there’s] a secure environment to work that in.”

Getting all those pieces in place is a huge task, one made necessary by the need to deliver intuitive user experiences, whether for employees or consumers. That means having a platform that can build, run, manage and secure the apps enabling those experiences. It is therefore vital, as Hugo concludes, that “you choose a partner who can support you in this.”

Vodafone Business is just one such partner, part of the VMware Cloud Provider Program (VCPP), our ecosystem of more than 4,300 cloud providers. They deliver a huge variety of cloud, networking, security and mobility services and solutions to businesses and government departments in 120 countries, operating out of 10,000 plus data centers. Many have been working with VMware for more than a decade; others, such as Saudi Arabian telecoms and technology leader STC, have only recently joined. What unites them is a commitment to acting as trusted advisors for customers that need expertise and guidance navigating their cloud journey, and an understanding of how VMware can help them achieve that.

Consider, for example, CenturyLink, a global cloud and managed services technology business headquartered in Louisiana.  Having worked with VMware for more than a decade, it was one of the first organisations to offer managed hosting with virtualisation. However, “over the last ten years, we’ve matured our business alongside VMware,” explains Dominic Deacon, sales director for cloud services and alliances in EMEA.

CenturyLink works with major businesses all over the world, including a leading European-focused low-cost airline. For the business, having the right planes in the right place at the right time, with minimal delays and fast turnarounds, is vital to delivering an experience that will keep its own customers coming back time and time again. Using CenturyLink’s cloud services, the airline has been able to deploy applications which enhance that experience, including the ability to plan an entire journey by simply entering a budget and clicking a button.

These sorts of applications have to be resilient and constantly available – if a surge in users cause it to fall over, the airline will miss out on potential revenue. That’s why using VMware technologies and having the ability to scale as required gives CenturyLink the flexible infrastructure its customers need.

Providers like CenturyLink are seizing the opportunity to help customers by delivering the most complete hybrid and multi-cloud solutions on the market, with consistent infrastructure and operations across clouds, thanks to our technology and support. Not only does that mean that enterprises are receiving the counsel, advice and technologies they need to meet their business ambitions, but our partners are able to capitalize on new business models to grow their own companies. “There’s a lot going on in the market. IT transformation is really going on in different places, seeing a lot of traction on container hosting. As a cloud provider we need to adapt to that, so we need to embrace more, different products to help our customers on their journey to the public cloud,” says Larik-Jan Verschuren, CEO of Fundaments, a Dutch cloud service provider.

If our partners can do that, then the rewards for them as a business are immense. Larik-Jan talked to us about how Fundaments is growing 30% year-on-year, compared to an infrastructure market that’s growing 20% year-on-year. Other providers are also seeing significant gains – IONOS, a leading European cloud provider, has seen double digit growth within its cloud business over the last year; STC, one of our newest partners, has seen triple digit growth working with us; and Turkcell, Eastern Europe’s largest digital operator, has grown its cloud enterprise services business by 60% year-on-year when working with us.

That’s why it’s vital that VMware continues to support its partners, providing the most complete and advanced technologies there are to bring to their customers. That includes Project Path, a unified, developer-ready platform that accelerates cloud service-delivery by simplifying operations across both VMware-based clouds and public clouds. It also covers VMware Cloud Director, a Software-as-a-Service version of VMware vCloud Director service-delivery platform which allows managed service providers to easily share a pool of VMware Cloud on AWS capacity across multiple tenants.

Those customers may be a leading regional airline; they might be a digital workplace provider; they might even be a football app. Whatever industry they’re in, as Süha Bayraktar, deputy general manager for Cloud & IoT Services Turkcell says, they all have three expectations: IT investment, reliability and security.

Enterprises get all three when they work with VCPP members, thanks to a combination of VMware technology and our partners’ expertise.

Every business I’ve mentioned here is working with VMware to support their customers on what is a long, challenging journey. I am delighted to be working with them, and echo Dominic’s thoughts when he says that “I’m personally really confident about the future and I’m really looking forward to working with VMware to drive customer success.

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