VMware was busy in Q1, training up its salesforce and engaging its channels with a wider range of product, it has told analysts. And deals are taking longer to close because of the broader ranges.
Excluding Pivotal and divestitures, Q1 total revenue growth was 18% year-over-year, above the midpoint of its guidance range. License revenues of $561m were also up 18% year-over-year. Total reported revenues grew 14% year-over-year in Q1 with license revenues up 15%.
It is pleased with the diversification of the business, it says, with non-standalone vSphere license bookings, again greater than 45% of total licence bookings as compared with greater than 30% in Q1 2013.
Carl Eschenbach, President and Chief Operating Officer: “So we continue grow our business around more of a holistic solution and we continue to see our channel become more skilled at selling solutions like vSOM, which is vSphere with operations management, really embracing this whole notion of no more naked vSphere. So we're pleased with the transactional business and our partners are really getting up-to-speed with selling more of the broader portfolio of products and offerings we have.”
VMware invested more heavily than usual in Q1 to ensure the sales force was skilled in selling the newer products, he says. This resulted in fewer actual selling days during the first quarter than originally anticipated
Patrick Gelsinger- Chief Executive Officer: “Having just come off of our Partner Exchange Conference, we haven't given our partners, our channel, a lot of new products that were high-velocity transactable products and vSOM is really the only one. Now, with VSAN plus VDP as well as bringing AirWatch into our channel, we see that we're bring an off a lot more product that they can be selling. The enthusiasm of the transactional channel for these broader products is extremely high.”
The Enterprise Licensing Agreements are getting wider in scope, obviously. “ELAs continue to grow as customers look to incorporate all of our products and even some of our new products seeding into it. So as that occurs, we're just in much deeper conversations with our customers. And some of the ELAs close on time as we've always said in a given quarter, some close are early and some actually go out a quarter or two later.”