While VMware has been sold in the IBM Cloud before, the new deal allows Dell EMC and its partners to resell it, beginning in Q4.
Today, at VMWorld in Barcelona Spain, IBM and Dell EMC are announcing an agreement which both expands IBM’s existing relationship with VMware and makes Dell EMC a reseller of VMware in the IBM Cloud. The agreement is specifically targeted at Dell EMC commercial customers, which means that the resell agreement will be predominantly a channel play.
“We are announcing the General Availability through Dell EMC of VMware vCenter Server on the IBM Cloud,” said Mike Arterbury, vice president Global Alliances, Dell EMC. “This is aimed at the midmarket business among our commercial customers.”
Arterbury indicated that from Dell EMC’s perspective, the deal has two strategic rationales – the extension of their cloud strategy beyond their existing relationships with AWS and Microsoft Azure, and the leveraging of the relationship between the companies under the Dell Technologies umbrella in a closer way than they had been before, even with EMC when VMware was part of the EMC Federation.
“We are trying to build more relationships and extend our infrastructure reach into all the public clouds,” Arterbury said. “We are also leveraging the technologies from the Dell Technologies family of companies in unique and interesting ways.”
VMware and IBM have been strategic partners since February 2016, with more than 1,400 clients utilizing the IBM Cloud to run VMware.
“VMware has had availability in the IBM cloud before, but this is now being expanded,” Arterbury said. In addition, as part of the extended agreement, Dell EMC will begin reselling VMware solutions on IBM Cloud, beginning with VMware vCenter Server, to their commercial customers. The resell agreement kicks in beginning in Q4 2017.
“VMware customers will have increased choice, because of the easier access to the IBM cloud,” Arterbury noted. “They will be able to either run it on-prem, or have the same offering on the IBM Cloud, where they will have the same degree of control and visibility as if it were part part of their on-prem data centre.”
IBM Cloud for VMware solutions targets commercial customers looking for enhanced security. Customers can choose to run VMware solutions on dedicated bare metal servers, encrypt data at rest on attached storage and connect on-prem environments to IBM’s global network of cloud data centres across 19 countries.
“The focus on the commercial market will make this a strong channel play,” Arterbury said. “They will be able to sell the capability to have the same VMware experience, whether on-prem, public cloud or private cloud, to their customers.”
