Cloud News: Omnissa Talks Partner Program, Broadcom Spurs ‘Devirtualization’ Trend

On July 2, Channel Futures reported the news that VMware’s End User Computing unit now is owned by private equity firm KKR and goes by Omnissa. One of the lingering questions we had pertained to how Omnissa plans to approach the indirect channel. Here’s the answer we got from a company spokesperson:

“Our partner ecosystem spans various types of channels and alliances partnerships, and we continue servicing and delivering outcomes to our collective customer base across the Omnissa platform and solutions. When VMware was acquired by Broadcom in November 2023, the End User Computing division continued to transact with EUC partners under the VMware program terms and structure, even after Broadcom discontinued the VMware program for partners selling other products. 

"Now, as a standalone company, and with the backing of KKR, Omnissa will invest to optimize our partner program for scale, growth and profitability, adding additional resources and support to accelerate the growth of partner-led services. We have been working closely with our partners to make the transition so they could begin transacting with Omnissa right away.”

Even though the combined Broadcom-VMware has been a done deal for some time, Hock Tan’s post-acquisition decisions continue to create ripple effects throughout the technology industry. 

The latest, as one case in point, comes courtesy of Gartner. The research firm recently released its latest Hype Cycle report, this time around data center infrastructure. And, analysts assert, Broadcom’s licensing changes to VMware are spurring a “devirtualization” movement — in other words, a shift from virtual environments back to physical.

That’s because, per Gartner, the pricing enforced by Broadcom “can increase two to three times” — despite CEO Tan’s early insistence to the contrary. And the bigger the workload, the more the expense, in general. As such, Gartner pegs “devirtualization” projects as hitting its peak in five to 10 years; right now, only about 1% of organizations are tackling such migrations, according to analysts.

Kyndryl has named a new chief information officer and changed up some of its other leadership appointments. 

The IT infrastructure services provider this week said Kim Basile is taking over as CIO. Basile succeeds Michael Bradshaw. Bradshaw, meantime, now runs Kyndryl’s applications, data and AI practice. He holds the title of senior vice president and global practice leader for that unit.

But wait, there’s more. Nicolas Sekkaki has moved over from the division Bradshaw now oversees, assuming the role of practice leader for the company’s cloud practice.

"Each of these appointments aligns well with our strategy, market demand and secular trends. They will help us accelerate our growth and support our customers now and for the long-term," said Martin Schroeter, chairman and CEO of Kyndryl.

Basile’s career DNA includes time at Lockheed Martin, Leidos and Vanguard. She’s responsible for continuous improvement and employee experience, among other duties. 

Up next, Bradshaw will work with Kyndryl Consult, the group that teams with strategic alliance partners and other units within the company. His goals will include helping customers modernize their technology and adopt AI. Before serving as Kyndryl’s CIO, Bradshaw work for companies including NBCUniversal Media, Lockheed Martin and IBM.

Finally, Sekkaki, who hails from firms includingCMA CGM, IBM and SAP, will help customers deploy cloud technologies.

Kyndryl was formed in 2021 when IBM spun off its managed infrastructure services business.

Channel partners helping financial services and insurance firms with cloud computing are in for some good news, if new stats from Nutanix are on the mark. The provider says these industries will adopt cloud computing by a factor of three times over the next three years.

Nutanix, which is ramping up its messaging to attract unhappy VMware by Broadcom partners, recently issued its sixth annual Financial Services Enterprise Cloud Index report.

There are two key reasons why respondents told Nutanix they’ll use more cloud computing in the coming years. The first? Security. Nearly all (99%) of people surveyed told Nutanix their organizations have experienced a ransomware attack within the last three years. A majority (89%) said there’s room for improvement when it comes to protecting against such breaches. 

Secondly, respondents ranked strategies around AI as another driver pushing them toward more cloud computing. AI quickly is becoming a tool for IT leaders to strengthen decision-making and give customers better experiences.

Overall, respondents said their IT budgets are slated for increases focused on the following buckets:

“It is startling to see that nearly all the financial services respondents … have experienced a ransomware attack,” said Lee Caswell, senior vice president of product and solutions marketing at Nutanix. “It’s a sign of the times that hybrid multicloud adoption is set to triple as financial services users gear up for heightened cybersecurity risks as new regulatory requirements, such as the EU’s 2025 Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), go into effect — making data protection and disaster recovery a hybrid multicloud imperative.”

Nutanix's Lee Caswell

In terms of current cloud computing challenges, financial services respondents mainly cited cybersecurity, AI investments, cost management, sustainability priorities and workload management across public and private infrastructure.

Vanson Bourne conducted the research for Nutanix. Analysts surveyed 1,500 IT and DevOps/platform engineering decision-makers around the world in December 2023. The respondent base spanned multiple industries, business sizes and geographies, including North and South America; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and the Asia Pacific-Japan region.

Amazon Web Services has put a new Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) template into Partner Central.

In an effort to “better support” partner-led migrations, the hyperscaler said, the template now features streamlined funding and approval processes. This cuts down on the number of authorizations needed to get a migration going, largely due to more automated workflows.

The news comes a couple years after AWS consolidated several funding programs into MAP. The initiative subsidizes some of the costs of moving to AWS, which gives channel partners more power during the sales process. Now, MAP supports migrations of up to $10 million annual recurring revenue, per AWS, and comes with new Strategic Partner Incentives, too, for spurring new sales.

The U.K. continues to investigate the hyperscalers and their business practices. In the latest development in that saga, AWS and Google Cloud have both told the Competition and Markets Authority that Microsoft is the exception in the market, not them.

Microsoft’s licensing practices are the problem, AWS said in a 33-page response to the CMA’s recently published working paper regarding its investigation. Beyond that, the world’s largest cloud computing provider said, the IT services sector is “well functioning, innovative, dynamic, highly competitive, and produces considerable benefits for customers.”

Google Cloud agreed, pointing fingers at Microsoft Azure. The provider told the CMA that “any restrictions should be limited to those players with market power.” 

It’s a familiar refrain by now, complaints against Microsoft from AWS and Google. Late last year, the companies both called out Microsoft in comments to the CMA.

Strangely, Microsoft didn’t contribute any responses to the CMA’s working paper.

Stiff competition in the China cloud computing market has prompted Alibaba Cloud to cut its pricing by up to 50%.

Reuters reported this week that Alibaba’s new costs started on July 3 as the provider fights for more market share. For example, the company dropped pricing on elastic computing services by 15-20%, according to its website. Services using Nvidia's V100 and T4 graphics processing units will decline by 41-47%.

Alibaba Cloud is facing more cloud computing rivalry from the likes of China Telecom and China Unicom.

Stiff competition in the China cloud computing market has prompted Alibaba Cloud to cut its pricing by up to 50%.

Reuters reported this week that Alibaba’s new costs started on July 3 as the provider fights for more market share. For example, the company dropped pricing on elastic computing services by 15-20%, according to its website. Services using Nvidia's V100 and T4 graphics processing units will decline by 41-47%.

Alibaba Cloud is facing more cloud computing rivalry from the likes of China Telecom and China Unicom.