Ottawa-based ThinkOn is a long-standing VMware partner program, a partnership that ThinkOn CEO Craig McLellan admitted has gone through some “ups and downs over the years” but has emerged with a tighter focus on “helping us solve real problems.”

ThinkOn is a channel-only cloud service provider that offers turnkey infrastructure and data management to value-added resellers and managed service providers. Those entities in turn offer ThinkOn’s services to enterprises and the public sector across North America, Europe, and Australia. ThinkOn has been working with VMware since its founding in 2013, with that collaboration bearing various VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) partner program accolades.

McLellan explained to SDxCentral in an interview that the firm’s initial work with VMware was tied to enterprises using virtual machines (VMs) to gain hardware efficiencies, which then evolved toward driving functionality from that platform. Demand for those services drove significant enterprise interest but also requests for more bespoke offerings.

McLellan noted that VMware was very open toward catering to enterprise needs, which resulted in “the VMware of old probably [spreading] themselves too thin across too many partners. It's a hard thing to decide what's too many and what's not enough.”

That diversification was laid bare following Broadcom’s near-$70 billion acquisition of VMware that closed in late 2023.

One of Broadcom’s first big moves with its new software-focused entity was the streamlining of VMware’s bloated product portfolio. CEO Hock Tan touted that move shortly after the deal closed, action that Forrester Research Principal Analyst Tracy Woo at that time said involved shrinking VMware’s offerings from “like 92 SKUs to two.”

The main one of those two was Broadcom putting a strong focus on VMware’s halo Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform. The other one is VMware’s vSphere offerings, with a handful of other VMware products that can be plugged into VCF and vSphere.

Big changes caused a big uproar

The other big integration headline was Broadcom’s complete reconfiguration of VMware’s license and go-to-market structure that alongside its willingness to create bespoke offerings also had accumulated a chest full of bespoke service contracts. This change drew a significant uproar from long-time VMware channel partners and end-users that continues to reverberate today.

Despite the uproar, Tan has repeatedly touted VMware’s ability to retain most of its largest customers to the new operating model.

McLellan did note that these moves were traumatic at that time, but that the old VMware suffered from support challenges as its product offerings started to multiply, a challenge that ultimately impacted how ThinkOn was able to support its customer base.

“It probably would have worked fine if support had always been as good as it is now, or as it was in the very beginning, but you just end up with too many variables,” McLellan said. “As a service provider, you tend to be very concerned about repeatability because you don't want to do one-offs; they're very expensive. It doesn't matter how hard you try; they're expensive, especially when something goes bump in the night.”

As an example of this support challenge, McLellan noted that the big “bump” nowadays is typically around cybersecurity issues, something that Broadcom’s participation in broader efforts like Mythos does help to alleviate.

“I think that with [Broadcom] embracing tools like Mythos from a quality assurance perspective gives me more comfort because I'm always worried about open-source products, and not because I don't relish the use of them, it's because I don't know who to call when there's a problem. And I think cybersecurity is one of those areas where it's going to become extremely dangerous to a lot of people,” McLellan said. “I think even those enterprise customers that maybe are frustrated with the software costs are still going to be like a cybersecurity incident dwarfs any software expense.”

McLellan also uses this thinking when it comes to understanding how Broadcom invoked VMware changes.

“The Broadcom that I've come to learn and experience is one of they put the facts on the table, and they don't spend much time trying to justify or explain them. They just say here's the facts, and those that choose to kind of ignore those facts I think eventually become very frustrated because they were waiting for someone to explain them,” McLellan said. “And the reality is … just take the time, read it, understand it, determine where the implication is to your own business or not, and then move forward.”

That’s not to say that McLellan does not have sympathy for those adversely impacted by the moves, but that many let emotions drive their reactions.

“When they made their pricing change, to me it was inconsequential. It really was inconsequential as any other VCSP,” McLellan said. “But there's just been a lot of people that I think got angry over things that were beyond their control instead of saying ‘okay, how do I actually deal with this?’”

This is also how McLellan said ThinkOn investigates the growing number of potential VMware alternatives.

“Lots of vendors, they float an idea, it gets discussed, the next thing you know the idea has changed a little bit, and inevitably there's always some change if people float ideas early,” McLellan said. “[We’re] at least given enough levers in our business that we can adjust accordingly, and we just kind of roll with it because the one thing we can't tolerate is poor software. That to me is the kiss of death for any service provider because you just have to look at your ticket volumes and you're like, ‘oh my God! I'm consuming all this time keeping the lights on things that frankly I didn't expect.’ We don't have that issue with Broadcom.”

McLellan also pointed to significant disruptions that come with change, including stress on end-users needing to learn new systems, retraining of staff, and the need to run parallel systems during a transition process.

VCSP support

Other VCSP partners have expressed similar confidence since Broadcom’s VMware changes. One of those is 11:11 Systems, which has solidified its VCSP standing by purchasing a handful of fellow program partners.

Dante Orsini, chief revenue officer at 11:11 Systems, told SDxCentral in an interview earlier this year that there are providers out there that are not as solid in their relationship with Broadcom as 11:11 Systems and thus have been vocal about their challenges.

"I think that if I look at what we've done and what we've built, and how we're excited about the VMware platform, and we continue to grow, not just through acquisition, but also organically ... I think we have a very strong relationship Broadcom, and I think it's based on delivery," Orsini said. "So I feel like anything else, you're only as good as your ability to continue to deliver."

Despite that backing, Ricky Cooper, VP for cloud service provider and OEM sales for Broadcom, recently penned a blog post tactically focused on highlighting partner and customer benefits from the VCSP program changes. This includes the usual talking points of changing the program’s focus toward partners that can better support changing customer needs based around VCF and private cloud, but also indicated that the defining period of this partner commitment is at hand.

“Against this backdrop, this is a defining period for the VMware Cloud Service Provider ecosystem, one that is focused on building a more economically viable ecosystem that is grounded in private cloud independence, deep services capability, and long-term customer value,” Cooper wrote, later adding that, “the next 12 months is an important window for both VCSPs and customers. For VCSPs, it is an opportunity to invest, differentiate via value-added services, and align with the future direction of the ecosystem. For customers, it is a time to assess current environments, engage with providers, and plan for the next phase of their cloud journey.”

McLellan indicated that ThinkOn is on board for this journey, a claim backed by what he sees as a cleaner-running organization and a stronger focus on supporting VCSP partners.

“[Broadcom’s] much more focused now on helping us solve real problems and they're also very fixated on providing great support, which I wouldn't have said three years ago,” McLellan said.