Over the last 12 months, since Broadcom completed the acquisition of VMware, we have met with our partners, from 1:1 meetings to in-person regional partner advisory boards and virtual events, to learn what they need to drive more revenue with improved profitability, and, most importantly, better serve our mutual customers. Based on these conversations, we revised our Broadcom Advantage Partner Program and recently introduced a new points-based approach that clearly delivers more value to both our partners and our customers.
Partner feedback informs new points-based program
Our new points-based partner program rewards and recognizes partners based on key value-based attributes, such as bookings, enablement, and services capabilities. It also levels the playing field – it ensures that partners who invest in these areas move up in the program regardless of size. Key program elements include:
- 70 percent of points earned from bookings, recognizing financial contributions.
- 30 percent of points earned on technical expertise, certifications and services capabilities, such as:
- Pre-sales expertise and VMware-certified technical professionals (Broadcom Knights with a specialty in VMware Cloud Foundation).
- Post-sales deployment, implementation, and customer enablement.
- Participation in the Expert Advantage Program providing professional services or educational services, and other high-value partner initiatives.
This revised program structure ensures that partners committed to excellence — whether through services, certifications, or strategic investments — are rewarded accordingly.
Partner-Driven Enhancements
The following program enhancements ensure partners have the right tools, protections, and opportunities to thrive in an evolving IT landscape:
Achievers Program: The Achievers Program is a hybrid model that balances upfront price protection discounts with back-end profitability, ensuring partners can sustain margins while continuing to invest in technical and service capabilities for long-term success. The Achievers Program:
- Reintroduces a back-end rebate through distributors, improving financial stability for partners.
- Incorporates an earned Activities-Based Claim (ABC) component, encouraging ongoing investment in VMware solutions.
- Introduces tier-based differentiation, offering higher back-end payouts based on partner tier attainment within the Advantage Partner Program.
Value-based deal registration: Broadcom recognizes the expertise and effort our partners bring to customer engagements. We are prioritizing partners who invest in pre-sales, technical enablement, post-sales services, and ultimately, customer success. This approach ensures:
- Stronger deal protection for partners who proactively drive customer opportunities.
- Stronger differentiation for partners who add value beyond just resell transactions.
- Improved margins and competitive advantages for partners who lead with expertise.
New incumbency protection for renewals: Renewals are critical to both customer continuity and partner profitability. Our incumbency policy now applies strictly to true renewals, defining renewals as opportunities with the same product, duration and same number of cores. Capacity (new cores), net-new deals, and migrations now fall under deal registration rather than incumbency protection.
The new incumbency protection model ensures that partners managing existing VMware relationships receive priority for true renewals, safeguarding long-term investments in customer success. This model provides partners:
- Pricing protection for partners maintaining strong customer engagement.
- A seamless renewal process to drive operational efficiency.
- Greater incentives to expand renewal opportunities through additional capacity and adjacent solutions, which are now eligible for deal registration alongside and at the time of the renewal.
Actionable insights and tools to drive partner growth: We are making significant investments in systems and tools to empower partners with deeper visibility into their business so they can drive more growth. These improvements will provide:
- Self-service analytics for tracking performance, deals, and program tier status and progression.
- Enhanced visibility into upcoming renewals, enabling proactive engagement.
- Customer activations dashboards to optimize partner growth opportunities and capacity sales or adoption services strategies.
What’s Next
I look forward to growing together in this next phase of the Broadcom Advantage Partner Program. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to invest in our partners’ success! In the meantime, I hope to see you at one of our upcoming regional partner events for exclusive technical training, insight into our product roadmaps, go-to-market strategies and networking opportunities with both Broadcom experts and peers. We have an event next week in Amsterdam and in Seoul the week of May 19th. Per our partners’ request: we have also committed to holding two in-person partner advisory boards (PABs) per geo annually, including those held at VMware Explore events.
At Broadcom, we are committed to building a partner program that drives mutual success. These changes ensure that all our partners, including those new partners who specialize in VMware software, not only compete effectively but also deliver the highest level of service and innovation to customers. Let’s keep the conversation going — we want to know how this new program is delivering more value to you and our customers.
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