Broadcom has made significant enhancements to its Advantage Partner Program, designed to drive customer success through deeper partner engagements in the VMware ecosystem. The program is structured to provide a clear pathway to success for partners while driving greater customer value.
Building a High-Impact Partner Ecosystem
The foundation of the program enhancements centers on a simple principle: value-based partnership. Every element of the Advantage Partner Program is intentionally designed to strengthen a partner’s ability to lead customers through the full private-cloud journey, from early architecture and solution design through deployment, optimization, and ongoing success.
By leaning into the private cloud opportunity with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) at the core, partners who invest deeply in Broadcom, build advanced architectural capability, complete role-based certifications, and deliver consistent end-to-end customer outcomes, will unlock greater rewards, differentiated benefits, and higher profitability across the program.
These program changes stem directly from feedback Broadcom received from partners requesting greater differentiation aligned to the level of their investment. Broadcom responded by restructuring benefits to recognize high-performing and deeply-invested partners.
Streamlined Structure, Enhanced Benefits
Partners are evaluated through a points-based system that measures not just transactions, but also certifications, resource investment, and services expertise. The program encourages partners to be well rounded in their value to the customer with a required ratio of performance and capability points across each tier level. To drive differentiation in investment and reward, Broadcom has introduced a tiered discounting structure for deal registration: and integrated new renewal opportunities into the program construct. This value structure incentivizes partners, regardless of size, to be highly skilled in the pre- and post-sales journey with the customer, not just the transaction.
A Focus on Platform Adoption and Customer Success
A core objective of Broadcom’s partner strategy is accelerating adoption of VCF so customers unlock the full value of their private cloud investment. Adoption, not just initial purchase, is where customers realize resilience, automation, security, and long-term ROI. To better serve customers, Broadcom wants partners to invest in building VCF technical skills, implementation capability, and post-sales engagement, and we are aligning program incentives accordingly.
The partners who architect the solution, guide the deployment, and drive consumption are the ones ensuring customers truly succeed on VCF. The program focuses on recognizing partners that can drive deployment of VCF ensuring platform adoption. One key change is around how the deal registration program evaluates approvals based on set value based criteria and platform adoption actions
- VCF is an adoption-led platform, and customer value is realized through ongoing architecture, deployment, and optimization, not a one-time sale.
- We want to reward the partner who can prove they are helping customers with adoption, consumption, and business outcomes, not simply the partner tied to the last PO.
- Customers benefit most when partners stay actively engaged, guiding their private cloud journey with real expertise.
Renewals Move Into Deal Registration
As renewals shift into deal registration for VCF and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF), partners will secure renewal protection by demonstrating customer adoption. This ensures that renewals are led by the partner actively driving value, not just the reseller of record.
Value-Based Evaluation
Deal registration will be approved based on clear value indicators, including:
- Technical capability
- Architecture and implementation skills
- Customer adoption proof
- Services capability
- Delivery strength
This value-based model ensures customers receive support from the most qualified, capable partner, and enables partners who are truly driving customer outcomes to be rewarded.
As part of this update to deal registration Broadcom has also introduced differentiated discounts by tier aligned to rewarding partners’ investment.
Accelerating VCF 9.0 Adoption
All program elements are structured to help partners drive customer migration to VCF 9.0, announced earlier this year. Broadcom will prioritize and recognize VCF 9.0 certifications only for program points eligibility in the current program cycle. Partners will now have until the end of April 2026 to meet these requirements for the next evaluation period.
One key shift has been the move to role-based certifications focused on Sales, Pe-Sales, Architect and Implementation as key personas. Pinnacle, Premier & Select partners are also now required to have a minimum number of VCF 9.x certifications by these roles to showcase their investment in developing a foundational VCF practice.
Business planning templates are now integrated into the portal, with Pinnacle and Premier partners required to submit annual operating plans aligned with Broadcom sales teams.
Another differentiator is that Broadcom offers free training to all enrolled partners, with Pinnacle partners receiving unlimited certification vouchers and Premier partners receiving 10 vouchers. The program also recognizes resource investment by providing points for dedicated resources and “Knights” on staff aligned to building a world class services practice.
Leading with Services Excellence Through Expert Advantage
Consulting and Professional services are foundational to the program, with Pinnacle partners now required to achieve Expert Advantage status as a tier requirement. Our objective is to rapidly build partner led services capability and for the first time, Broadcom has published minimum revenue requirements for Expert Advantage partners, requiring partners to demonstrate existing services expertise. The program offers two Expert Advantage levels—EAPP and EAPP+—with partners earning 100 and 200 points respectively that get captured into the capability bucket.
EAPP partners are also required to have dedicated Knights on staff. The goals of the Knights program is to retain, build loyalty and increase engagement within the Broadcom ecosystem; and to provide customers and sales teams clear visibility to the best Partner technical resources who are making the largest business impact.
Empowering Partners with Balanced Benefits, Self-Serve Tools and Enablement Activities
Rounding this out, the Broadcom Advantage Program brings together a combination of partner benefits, enablement tools and self-serve capabilities.
Broadcom's Achievers program will now be available exclusively for VCF sales providing both solution providers and distributors the opportunity to earn back-end rebates to enhance their profitability and drive joint go to market execution.
A new performance dashboard provides partners with an integrated view of bookings, renewals, certifications, rebate eligibility, and earnings data—all in one unified interface. A new leveling dashboard is also available for partners to track their tier progression real-time.
Broadcom is also introducing a new Partner Journey Module that provides role-based prescribed learning paths for partner sales, pre-sales, architects and implementation specialists. Each journey includes three milestone stages with rewards for completion, covering required certifications, understanding of program benefits and dashboards, and utilization of newly launched assessment tools.
Regional Simplification
Partners operating across multiple countries within a region can now leverage Hierarchy functionality to combine points across entities and maintain one tier level per region, rather than managing separate requirements for each country. This simplification makes it easier for regional partners to do business with Broadcom and unlock maximum program benefits.
Continuous Engagement and Measurement
The program evaluates partner performance bi-annually in May and November. This cadence, combined with ongoing business planning for Pinnacle and Premier partners and sales team scorecarding, ensures continuous alignment between Broadcom and its partner ecosystem.
A Clear Path Forward
These program enhancements connect directly to the partner value pyramid - a structured framework, introduced in Brian Moats’, Broadcom SVP Global Commercial and Partner Sales, latest blog, for partners to elevate their engagement from product-focused selling to a true platform, with a full-cycle advisory approach. These program changes aligned with the value pyramid provide partners with a clear pathway to deliver customer value.
To summarize, Broadcom's foundations to success through partners, focus on five core principles:
- Reward partners for their investment in building a successful end to end VCF practice
- Drive adoption & delivering outcomes
- Building recurring business models throughout the customer lifecycle
- Unlocking the platform value by accelerating VCF 9.0
- Migration and leading with services to differentiate at scale
To learn more about the Broadcom Advantage Partner program and access the latest resources, visit here