Broadcom’s VMware Customers Target Of Nutanix Higher Incentive Partner Tier

‘Nutanix has sensed blood in the water from the Broadcom acquisition and it is making a big push to do right by partners,’ says Gary McConnell, CEO of Nutanix partner VirtuIT. ‘They've rolled out a ton of training and have made their technical and sales resources available to partners that are new to having discussions around their ecosystem.’

Nutanix is chumming the waters for partners to take down logos and convert Broadcom’s VMware customers with a new premier tier for its partner program that incentivizes customer acquisition, total contract value as well as the number of representatives the partner has selling Nutanix, the company’s channel chief told CRN.

“We created this new premier tier for those partners who are truly all in,” said David Gwyn, Nutanix’s channel chief. “You’re going to get higher rebates and just better incentives for all the different things that we try to incentivize, like new logo and autonomous behavior and things like that.”

While total contract value and new logos are important, Gwyn told CRN that Nutanix’s premier tier will also measure the “strategic commitment” of the partner.

“Internally, we look at strategic commitment, which is evident by a whole bunch of different metrics that I track,” he said. “What I'm looking for is breadth of commitment. What percentage of your sales force is committed to us? Those are the gates into premier.”

San Jose, Calif.-based Nutanix specializes in hybrid-cloud infrastructure, and has a hypervisor that competes with Broadcom’s vSphere. Nutanix sells its products primarily through the channel.

In the company’s annual report last week, Nutanix told investors it seeks “deepening” relationships with key resellers and distributors in each geographic region in which it operated, and it plans to continue to put cash behind partners to drive sales into larger enterprise customers.

“We believe that increasing channel leverage, particularly as we expand our focus on opportunities in commercial accounts, by investing in sales enablement and co-marketing with our channel and OEM partners in the long term will extend and improve our engagement with a broad set of end customers,” the company stated in the filing made public Nov. 8.

Partners told CRN that since Broadcom’s $69 billion deal to buy VMware was finalized a year ago this week, Nutanix has sensed “blood in the water” and the company is making resources available to help: support and training.

“Nutanix has sensed blood in the water from the Broadcom acquisition and it is making a big push to do right by partners,” said Gary McConnell, CEO of Nanuet, N.Y.-based Nutanix partner VirtuIT. “They've rolled out a ton of training and have made their technical and sales resources available to partners that are new to having discussions around their ecosystem.”

Gwyn said he is relentlessly focused on keeping the Nutanix Elevate partner program simple and consistent. He wants partners to have a predictable set of tools, resources, and marketing platforms to take Nutanix to market.

“I deliberately didn’t make a lot of other changes,” Gwyn told CRN. “What I try to tell all my partners is, look, ‘You will not see a lot of changes in our partner program. That's deliberate, because I want you to have the stability, to be able to trust us over multiple fiscal years that you can build programs around our incentive plans.’”

Tim Joyce, founder and CEO of Orinda, Calif.-based Roundstone Solutions, a Bay Area Nutanix partner since 2014. He said the partner program has been good and it is only getting better.

“We're very bullish on our Nutanix business going forward,” he said. “Everything about Nutanix is improving. It's all on the up. There’s great stuff happening there. We’re very excited. We're looking at it for the next five to 10 years as being great.”