AirWatch MDM Invades VMWare's Massive Partner Network

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AirWatch’s wares are wending their way through VMware’s massive reseller network, nearly a half year after the latter announced that it was snapping up the Atlanta-based mobile device management (MDM) company.

VMware made headlines on Jan. 22 when it said that it was acquiring AirWatch for $1.5 billion — a record for the subsidiary of data storage giant EMC. Describing the deal as “a foundational element to our End-User Computing group,” VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger said at the time that the MDM specialist would help fuel VMware’s growth by “delivering a complete and proven enterprise-class solution for empowering the mobile workforce.”

VMware closed the deal a month later on Feb. 24. Today, the company’s resellers are getting a crack at offering AirWatch’s cloud-based MDM solutions.

“Opening the AirWatch channel to VMware partners represents a significant milestone in VMware’s operational integration of AirWatch,” stated AirWatch’s Lanier Norville in a company blog post.

AirWatch’s cloud-based “mobile device, email, application, content and browser management solutions will soon be more readily available from local resellers across the country and the globe.” Partners will have access to “on-premise solutions and services at a later date.”

There will be no shortage of AirWatch channel partners, suggested Dave O’Callaghan, VMware’s senior vice president of the Global Partner Organization, in a separate blog post. O’Callaghan revealed that “the AirWatch Enterprise Mobility Management Platform through Subscription Cloud (SaaS) SKUs will available on the VMware price list to our global network of more than 75,000 partners.”

Moreover, AirWatch MDM gains exposure to an even bigger customer base. O’Callaghan added that his company is looking forward to acquainting “our more than 500,000 customers” to the enterprise mobility management platform.

AirWatch, a favorite among VCs during 2013, got an early start in the fast-growing market for cloud-based MDM. Last year, it boasted that is was attracting customers at a rate of 500 new clients per month. Meanwhile, other IT heavyweights, including Dell, HP, IBM, Oracle and even Microsoft, jumped on the MDM bandwagon.

Post-acquisition, AirWatch is retain some autonomy as a VMware subsidiary, said O’Callaghan. “AirWatch sales will remain a separate sales and channel organization, and will continue to sell directly and through channels,” while customer support remains in-house.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Datamation. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.