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Canadian partners on the list for VMware’s Partner Professional Services pilot

VMware’s Partner Professional Services Program pilot will include Canadian partners and details are set to roll out over the next month.

According to Donna Wittmann. executive director of channels alliances and commercial sales for VMware Canada, even as companies reach out about the program, she already has several in mind that she’d like to offer membership.

“We have the intention to be in the front end of that in Canada and hope to a really early adopter of that program,” she said.  “We have a lot of partners that are very interested.”

According to Eric Gales, country manager at VMware Canada, details of the pilot are still a work in progress, but as they emerge the virtualization and cloud services company would approach “relevant” partners about joining.

“We’re very focused on making sure that it’s a win-win, and that needs to bed one in a series of discussions where a partner needs to come to a conclusion about whether they’re willing and able to commit,” said Gales.

Dave O’Callaghan, the company’s senior vice president of global partner ogranization announced the program this week at PEX 2015 in San Francisco.

The pilot will take place the first half of this year, and will initially include consulting partners offering software-defined data centre (SDDC) solutions, offering them access to SDDC experts, training discounts, customer-focused labs and more.

According to Carl Eschenbach, VMware president and chief operating officer, it should help ease the question of whether whether the company is competing with partners for professional services.

“As we go and drive new technologies, we need a lot more services to help with the implementation work and the deployment and to make sure the solutions are adopted with our partners,” said Wittmann.  “There’s just a lot more need for wraparound services.”