Lesson 5 Selling vCenter Operations Manager in Competitive Environments (VSP - MGMT 5)
Q:
How does VMware recommend you co-compete in accounts with traditional IT vendors? A:d
Compete head-on: Go after every piece of management business in an account.
Only sell to the virtual administrators.
Compete only for service desk business.
Focus on where VMware fits in the customer’s cloud strategy and up level with management. Q:
What is a downside of using Microsoft System Center?
A:c
If a customer needs a lot of management functionalities, they will have to buy many tools to build an entire cloud management suite.
Microsoft’s approach is narrow in scope –it’s designed to solve only a handful of problems.
System Center was originally built for the physical infrastructure. It is heavily agent driven, very
intrusive into the OS and the underlying physical infrastructure.
Q:
What is the niche vendor’s approach to management?
A:ax dx
They provide broad management across all aspects of virtualization and cloud.
They sell fewer, but more expensive licenses.
They recognize and attack a single problem that plagues administrators.
They demonstrate value through complex and lengthy proof of concepts.
Q:
What is a WEAKNESS of the traditional IT management vendor?
A:a
They are still selling the same solutions which are not designed to scale or align with the needs of a highly dynamic cloud environment.
They are small vendors with questionable futures, with tools designed to solve only a few problems.
They are only interested in Mainframe software.
Q:
What is a STRENGTH of niche management vendors?
A:d
They have high exposure in the organization, selling to the “C” suite decision makers.
They have technologies deeply rooted into Enterprise IT Operations & Application Lifecycle
Management.
They are closely aligned with the platform vendor’s development teams.
They have a well-trained and focused sales force. Because they are trained on the use case, they are laser focused on who to position and how to position their product.
Q:
According to the competitive checklist for evaluating management options, what are THREE things a customer should look for regarding INTEGRATION?
A:acd
Single vApp deployment
Sold only per VM license
vSphere health model
Performance capacity, configuration and chargeback management all integrated into the same suite Q:
How does management fit in VMware’s software-defined datacenter vision?
A:b
Management needs to keep applications and infrastructure tightly coupled into vertical stacks.
Once the datacenter infrastructure is defined as a software service you can then control, automate and manage the entire data center fabric through software.
When administrators manually set alerts, it makes the datacenter run better.
Q:
What are THREE weaknesses of niche management vendors?
A:abdx bcdxabc
Many of their performance management tools are built on static rules-based foundations.
Many of the capacity management tools aren’t designed for the dynamic style of a virtualized
datacenter.
If a customer needs a lot of management functionalities, they will only get a piece of it with each niche product.
Their implementations are lengthy and complex.
Q:
What are THREE weaknesses of the platform management vendor, such as Microsoft?
A:acd
They lack a strategic vision in comparison to VMware’s software-defined data center vision.
Their tools are expensive to purchase and own.
They tend to be fragmented, lacking true integration.
Their implementations are highly scripted and complex.
Q:
What is the competitive “Platform Vendor’s” approach to management?
A:dx ax c
They attack specific use-case problems and remediate them.
They use organic development of tightly integrated tools.
They leverage their established channels for go to market.
They leverage the physical infrastructure footprint to keep customers from virtualization/cloud.
Q:
What are TWO strengths of the traditional IT management vendor?
A:abx adx
All their technology is built with virtualization and cloud in mind.
They have a long track record in many established accounts.
Their tools are tightly integrated and easy to use.
They manage both virtual and physical assets.
Q:
Which two companies did VMware acquire in order to bolster their management offering?
A:ad
Integrien
VKernel
Cloupia
DynamicOps
Q:
According to the competitive checklist for evaluating management options, what are THREE things a customer should look for regarding ANALYTICS?
A:acdx bcd
Manual setup and administration
Adaptive, learning based analytics
Dynamic thresholding
Smart alerts
Q:
What is a STRENGTH of the platform management vendors?
A:a
They are strong in their pricing and bundling and their marketing capabilities against VMware.
The product is easy to deploy with a “download and go” evaluation.
They have frequently scheduled releases which provide new features very rapidly.