As technologies and business models continue to evolve within our industry, it’s only natural that our channel partnerships evolve as well. These podcast interviews, co-hosted by ChannelE2E’s Content Czar Joe Panettieri and CompTIA President and CEO Todd Thibodeaux, talk with channel chiefs to get their perspective on how these relationships are shifting in the presence of innovation.
VMware’s Ross Brown, vice president of worldwide partners and alliances, takes on the term software eats the world and offers up his perspective as software unlocks the world as partners leverage APIs, cloud and virtualization to unlock the full value of technology for customers.
Q: We’ve heard the term “software eats the world.” But you offer up a different viewpoint – saying that “software unlocks the world.” What does that mean?
A: The term software eats the world is a fear-driven and opportunistic statement here in the valley. It’s the notion that industries who have had traditional barriers to entry and traditional asset-based strategies are being disrupted. We, however, see it as an opportunity on the software side. Ever since the beginning in virtualization we’ve been freeing operating systems and applications up from being bound to a given machine. It’s the philosophy of using software to unlock what was originally designed as a fixed structure asset – meaning it was built for a purpose, like running SAP or running your mail system – and freeing it up.
Q: How do you see the transformation of partners happening in the next five years?
A: What I’m increasingly hearing is more and more partners moving from this notion of configure and install as their primary value. It’s taking that thought and moving it to the software side. Which is more about: How do I leverage the APIs and the cloud services and really build a federated experience across public services? That’s where I see a lot of folks moving.
Q: Is that shift in mindset being driven by customer needs?
A: To a certain extent it is being driven by customers. But I think customers are having a hard time connecting their desired outcomes with the articulation to partners. There isn’t a lot of roadmaps here. Now, what has happened is the tooling has gotten a lot better. If you go back 10 years ago, the number of web services that had open APIs that were well-documented was rare. Now, services are listed right up there with “about our product benefits” and the next one is “integrate with us.” I think the learning curve has come way down, the tooling has gone way up and the needed customers has gone through the roof – and that’s the confluence that typically drives any sort of change in the channel.
Add CompTIA to your favorite RSS reader
