LAS VEGAS — VMware today unveiled new partner programs and solution competencies at VMware Partner Exchange 2012 in Las Vegas that company executives hope will help drive the next phase of IT transformation.

With more than 4,300 attendees at the annual partner conference, VMware’s general session keynote speakers focused on discussing where the IT world is heading. Unsurprising, each of the three general session speakers focused on talking about the cloud and the rapidly growing opportunity that exists, particularly in the private cloud. With approximately 85 per cent of its revenue coming from partners and a private cloud opportunity industry research firm Forrester expects to be valued at $41.5 billion by 2015, there are plenty of opportunities and revenue to go around for VMware partners.

“We’re at a great jumping off point for the future, but we at VMware have to continue to invest. We have to invest in you and your business to help us seize this opportunity,” Scott Aronson, senior vice president of global channels and alliances at VMware, told a room full of channel partners.

As part of its strategy to capture as much of the cloud opportunity going forward, VMware announced several new channel programs and solution competency areas.

The new Consulting and Integration Partner Program (CIPP) was developed for partners that are focused mainly on a consulting practice. Through CIPP, VMware will provide its partners with practice-based technical enablement and a collaborative approach to field engagement. Included benefits are optimized technical and marketing enablement, support for industry- and technology-specific solutions, joint business planning and project pipeline management.

Recognizing that even in the virtualization world, one size does not fit all, VMware announced a new SMB competency specialization (joining its Academic, US Federal and Healthcare specializations) and enhanced programs for increased investment in SMB partner programs. The enhanced program will provide new tools and incentives for partners specializing in the SMB customer segment. VMware is rolling out demand creation tools, customer offers, free training videos on demand and increased incentives.

Additionally, VMware also announced changes to its advantage+ and Solution Rewards incentive programs that will provide partners with the ability to double their incentives in 2012. Net-new deals registered through advantage+ will be eligible for a new backend bonus rebate. Through Solution Rewards, partners that achieve solution competencies will be eligible for a first-time sales bonus rebate when they sell a new solution outside the Infrastructure Virtualization solution competency to an existing customer for the first time.

According to Aronson, partners that achieve competencies find their average deal sizes are 3.5 times the deals closed by partners without VMware competencies. VMware will also launch a Management competency during the first quarter. Available now are two other competencies — Virtualization of Business-Critical Applications (VBCA) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).