The Channel is at a Crossroads
From evolving licensing models to major vendor disruptions, partners are being challenged to rethink how they deliver value and drive growth. As perpetual socket licensing gives way to subscription-based models, and the VMware landscape continues to shift under Broadcom’s ownership, channel partners must adapt quickly to stay competitive. In this blog, we’ll explore how these market dynamics present new opportunities for Veeam ProPartners to strengthen customer relationships, unlock new revenue streams, and lead with confidence through uncertainty.
The Licensing Evolution: Why Subscriptions Matter Now
When it comes to growing any business’s revenue, everybody’s got an opinion. Some customers want to stay on sockets and use perpetual licenses for a myriad of reasons. They may not understand that there are other benefits to subscription licensing and, maybe as a Veeam ProPartner, you’re not sure either.
Socket licensing may provide a deal that is “too good to be true” for ultra-high-density deployments, but these environments are exceptions and companies shouldn’t design their licensing (or anything for that matter) around exceptions to the rule. Rather, they should focus on the main prospects of their target market, and for these situations, subscription licensing provides a great deal of benefits. This is also vindicated by Veeam’s license sales statistics.
It’s an evolution that your customers might struggle with, but the long-term prospects are where the benefits lie. The progression of technology is mirrored in the evolution of threats to technology, which we’ve seen in recent years of cyber security attacks. Security features, migration flexibility, and ease of workloads just cannot keep up when using socket-based perpetual licensing.
So, it’s time for Veeam ProPartners to start thinking:
- Where and how can I up-sell or cross-sell?
- How can my renewals offer an opportunity for me to increase my organization’s revenue and further protect my end users?
- What edition of Veeam Data Platform are my customers using? Does it provide the full advantage of data protection that their business requires?
Ensuring your customers are on the correct Veeam Data Platform license that provides the sufficient protection they need, is one area partners can look at, as an example. Veeam’s new products like Veeam Data Cloud Vault, which offers offsite cloud storage integrated with the higher editions of Veeam Data Platform, also offers a great opportunity, as another example.
Market Disruption: VMware, Broadcom, and the Impact on Partners
A similar paradigm-shift lies within Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware. Broadcom’s ownership of VMware has discouraged many of its customers and partners, since they’re displeased with how the company has run the virtualization business since buying it in November 2023. Many have discussed reducing or eliminating ties with the company.
Since the acquisition, customers have been pressured to commit to a VMware subscription, forego VMware support, or move on from VMware technologies. This decision is complex, with long-term implications no matter which way a customer goes.
Turning Migration Challenges into Revenue Opportunities
In a January, Gartner research released a note entitled “Estimating a Large-Scale VMware“, where Gartner analysts detailed the burdens expected for large-sized companies who are moving off VMware. This note stated that large-scale migrations, including scoping and technical evaluation, could take 18 to 48 months. The analysts noted that they “expect a midsize enterprise would take at least two years to untangle much of its dependency upon VMware’s server virtualization platform.” The analysts also estimated migration to cost $300 to $3,000 per virtual machine (VM) if the user employed a third-party service provider. Critically, the report adds:
“It is highly likely that other costs would be incurred in a large-scale migration. This includes acquisition of new software licenses and/or cloud expenses, hardware purchases (compute, storage), early termination costs related to the existing virtual environment, application testing/quality assurance, and test equipment. The heavy costs — in terms of finances, time, and staff — force customers to face questions and hesitations around leaving VMware, despite many customers facing disruption from Broadcom-issued changes to the platform.”
Numerous VMware customers costs rose by 300% after Broadcom’s takeover, but quitting VMware is tricky. With VMware being deeply integrated into some long-standing IT environments, planning a migration and moving off VMware can be extremely time-consuming and costly, not to mention the security risks.
Switching hypervisors requires lots of stability testing and proof of concepts prior to changing, so VMware customers are stuck between a rock and a hard place as their partners consider alternatives. VMware users are now at a crossroads, since they’re forced to make crucial decisions for their IT infrastructure. Whether you ditch or stick with VMware, there are long-lasting implications and migrations are onerous. That said, life under Broadcom will be expensive, with potential future bumps and twists.
Veeam’s Advantage: Platform Support and Migration Confidence
Many people might think that Veeam is forever associated with VMware, and in a strange way the two companies are inextricably linked, but it’s not in the way you might think.
While nobody does virtualization better than Veeam, and that of course includes VMware, nowadays virtualization is so much more. What may not be common knowledge, is that Veeam’s broad workload support gives Veeam ProPartners and our mutual customers options and security like they’ve never had before.
Veeam supports VMs, data, and applications for:
- VMware vSphere (15+ years)
- Microsoft Hyper-V (9+ years)
- Nutanix AHV (6 years)
- Red Hat Virtualization KVM (2 years)
- Oracle Virtualization Manager (2024)
- Proxmox VE (2024)
- Cloud: Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud (3 years)
- Containers: Red Hat OpenShift protected with Veeam Kasten
This is where Veeam comes in, whether it’s with VMware or any other hypervisor. There are lots of options, and you can read more about VMware to Hyper-V Migration: Best Practices and Veeam Hypervisor Migration to Hyper-V Guide or Hyper-V Migration: Simplify Moving Workload to learn more. Another option is Veeam Backup for Proxmox and Veeam Hypervisor Migration to Proxmox Virtual Environment Guide, which can assist both large and small customers.
There are many things to consider when migrating and some essential aspects of VM migration, including different types of migration, benefits, challenges, and best practices. Veeam’s goal is to equip partners and customers with the knowledge and tools needed to execute a seamless VM migration strategy. This VM Migration and VM Migration Tools article covers the various platforms and tools available, including migrating to cloud environments and other hypervisors, which highlights Veeam’s versatile capabilities.
Veeam’s patented and portable data format delivers complete data portability with the broadest storage support, avoids vendor lock-in, offers modern protection for modern workloads, and gives users the ability to migrate and modernize apps and infrastructure while recovering from anywhere to anywhere.
Nobody Beats Veeam at Virtualization, Backup, and Recovery
- Pioneering protection for the world’s leading hypervisors
- Instant recovery anytime, anywhere, at any scale
- No need for additional backup solutions across on-premises environments and in the cloud
Veeam Protects Data Throughout the Platform Migration Journey
- Migrate without changing workflows and processes
- Keep your business running with a seamless migration experience
- Secure, consistent protection across virtualization platforms
With Veeam, Costs are Minimized Because it Works
- Keep the focus on the business instead of backups
- A single platform with complete freedom, control, and visibility all in one place
- No data lock ins; you can access backups anytime
Opportunity Knocks: Embrace Change, Drive Growth
Cyber resilience and data migration challenges present significant opportunities for trusted Veeam ProPartners. Data migration is a key service that partners can provide to facilitate infrastructure updates and hybrid cloud modernization, and the importance of these services has risen in recent years. Partners and consultants should view data migrations not as tedious, time-consuming chores, but as opportunities to deliver greater value to customers.
Migration complicates security efforts by introducing vulnerabilities that can disrupt operations. About 44% of organizations have experienced unplanned downtime due to migration issues, according to 451 Research’s “VotE: Storage, Data Migration 2024” study, and 38% report data loss or corruption. Nearly three-fourths (73%) of organizations express concerns about security threats during the migration process. A partner with secure, consistent data migration practices can alleviate fears of security incidents and failed migrations.
You can learn more about the business impact of data migration in this brief by S&P Market Intelligence’s 451 Research, which covers how you can turn a migration challenge into an opportunity for both your company and your clients.
You can learn more about data migration across platforms in this on-demand webinar. Veeam ProPartners can find more information about migrating customer data and helping them on this journey in the ProPartner portal and capitalize on migration to maximize special promotions.
Resources
Migration resources page: https://www.veeam.com/solutions/data-portability/migration-resources.html
Recorded demos: https://www.veeam.com/resources/videos/product-demo-achieving-true-data-portability-veeam-data-platform.html and
https://www.veeam.com/resources/videos/product-demo-navigating-hypervisor-migration.html
Recorded webinar: https://www.veeam.com/resources/videos/webinar-hypervisor-migration-keeping-your-data-safe-in-a-changing-industry.html
The post Turning Change into Opportunity: How Veeam ProPartners Can Thrive Amid Licensing Shifts and VMware Uncertainty appeared first on Veeam Software Official Blog.
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