VMware support from Park Place Technologies: a better option

I think it is fair to say that the past 16 months have been fairly traumatic for VMware customers and channel partners following its acquisition by Broadcom. Much has been written about the ending of perpetual licences, the transition to subscriptions and bundling of software that has left many customers with potentially much higher costs. During this same period Broadcom has sought to position itself around Private Cloud and has been promoting VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) very heavily.

The implication has been that VMware customers who don’t make the move to VCF will be very much on their own moving forward. Support for VMware legacy products such as vSphere, vCenter and ESXi was outsourced to certain distributors, not always very successfully, as in the case of Ingram Micro. Support costs rose and complaints about poor service levels became widespread.

While the largest VMware enterprise customers and systems integrators seem to have been able to negotiate more favourable pricing and/or make use of more of the products bundled into the new VCF subscriptions, and are moving to VCF, there remains a very long tail of customers who seem unsure at best, and hostile at worst to the idea of transitioning to VCF.

VMware has a large customer base. By taking a view on the range of customer numbers I have seen, and being prudent, I think we can point to there being at least 350,000 customers worldwide. Even if only 30% of those customers decide against a move to VCF, that still leaves just over 100,000 customers with some difficult decisions to take. Giving those customers the time, space and support to make those decisions is where Park Place Technologies come in.

Park Place Technologies is the world’s leading data centre third party maintenance and support company. In recent years it has broadened its skills and offerings to provide a wide range of IT Infrastructure Management, IT Services and IT Consulting services. It has over 21,500 customers globally and has been providing VMware hardware and software support for the past 17 years.

Recently, Darren Ellis, Vice President of Sales at Park Place Technologies, briefed me on its expanded range of VMware support offerings. He recognises that VMware customers have four options in response to the changes wrought by Broadcom –

• continue VMware support by moving from perpetual licensing to the subscription model
• migrate to a new hypervisor provider like Hyper-V or Nutanix AVM
• migrate off VMware to a public cloud like Microsoft Azure, AWS or Google Cloud
• protect and defend existing perpetual licenses

Unless VMware customers decide to move to the new subscription model, they are going to need to maintain short, medium, or long-term support on their existing VMware systems. Park Place provide a range of tried and tested support and optimisation packages for vSphere – ESXi and vCenter, NSX Networking, vSAN, Site Recovery Manager, and Horizon which, it claims, saves 30-40% savings over VMware provided support. Park Place will step customers gently through the process of deciding the level and type of technical support they need by freeing up skills, time and money while deciding on the future direction they are going to take.

Park Place already has over 550 users of its VMware support services. These customers are supported by 300+ Level 3 VMware support specialists. It has been recruiting hard over the past year, and it is perhaps no surprise to learn that many of the new support staff have come directly from VMware. Park Place makes a point of stressing that all its L3 engineers are its own employees, nothing is contracted out. It’s part of a wider focus on employee development and customer relationships which I have seen at first hand over the 5 years that I have been following the company, and for which it should be very proud.

While looking through all the Park Place marketing and technical material relating to its VMware support service I was intrigued by the near complete absence of any reference to its very comprehensive infrastructure managed services offerings. I raised this with Darren Ellis. His response was very instructive and absolutely reflects the care and professionalism Park Place put into all their customer and employee interactions. Darren pointed out that, for many IT departments, managed infrastructure services feels like a potential threat to their continued employment. Given the initial primary interest is supporting perpetual based licenses, he prefers to focus first on maintenance and technical migration support, getting them used to the Park Place support culture, helping them free up costs and lessen the impact of the changes. However, there was clear a recognition that the customer’s desired future state was critical to understand and would ultimately dictate the service required. Darren provided examples where a managed service on the VMware layer proved beneficial by allowing the customer to focus and reskill on an alternative hypervisor technology. Ultimately, it is clear Park Place is putting the customer first, understanding and prioritising the need, and delivering a solution that aligns to that need. Building trust and confidence with Park Place culture and technical capability has been the key to its success.

Park Place Technologies rank very highly in customer satisfaction. Everything I have seen as I interact with its staff and customers, backs that up. If you are a VMware user facing up to the choices you will have to make moving forward, engaging with Park Place Technologies for support is an option you should be considering.