‘We have thousands of clients. I could count on one hand how many clients have actually transitioned completely off of VMware,’ says Ahead top executive Keith Odom in an interview with CRN.
Ahead is doubling down on its VMware-Broadcom business as services revenue explodes for the $4 billion solution provider, which is currently increasing its VMware services headcount by 50 percent across the U.S. and India.
“All the talk about clients getting off of VMware because the price is too high—that’s all gone away I feel like at this point,” Keith Odom, Ahead’s executive vice president of global consulting and services, told CRN. “We have thousands of clients. I could count on one hand how many clients have actually transitioned completely off of VMware.”
In fact, Ahead’s VMware services sales have increased upwards of 25 percent in 2025, Odom estimates, as enterprise customers are seeking channel partner services around how to leverage the full VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) stack to get a better ROI compared to competitors.
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Chicago-based Ahead is meeting this demand for VCF head-on by going on a hiring spree.
“We’ve seen a 100 percent commitment from Broadcom to move services to the partners,” said Odom. “For us, it’s been a meaningful, needle-moving jump in the amount of services. … So much so that we are increasing our resource capacity internally by 50 percent to go after this specific space around VCF.”
Ahead’s VMware-Broadcom Strategy
Ahead has thousands of employees in its services delivery and data center teams across the United States and India with a heavy focus on VMware.
The company targets enterprise VMware-Broadcom customers rather than the SMB market with Ahead offering a slew of VMware services while also reselling VCF bundles.
“People are still moving workloads to public cloud where it makes sense. But the amount of people saying, ‘I just want to get off VMware altogether’—that’s less than a handful of our customers who have just wiped the slate [clean],” he said. “At the end of the day, it would be hard to get off VMware. It’s a product set that has worked for years and years. There’s a passion in our client base around the product.”
Odom is an all-star services executive with decades of experience working in top global services roles for the likes of Dell-EMC, VCE (VMware, Cisco and EMC) and RoundTower Technologies. He now leads all of Ahead’s services, from consulting and integration to managed services and Ahead’s India operations.
In an interview with CRN, Odem takes a deep dive into Ahead’s VMware business, explains what is keeping customers on VMware and how Ahead is driving profitability with VMware-Broadcom.
How many of Ahead’s clients have moved off VMware completely since Broadcom took over?
When the acquisition first happened, there was a lot of uncertainty that filled the market. Then Broadcom came out with a different go to market, different operating model and different SKUs. The pricing seemed higher because they bundled and simplified their SKU structure.
All the talk about clients getting off of VMware because the price is too high—that’s all gone away I feel like at this point.
We have thousands of clients. I could count on one hand how many clients have actually transitioned completely off of VMware.
So that didn’t really happen as much as the market turmoil in just not knowing what was going on.
At the end of the day, it would be hard to get off VMware.
Because one: it’s a product set that works. It’s worked for years and years. There’s passion in our client base around the product. So when you have a product that’s just worked for you for a long time, you tend not to want to move away from it.
Then No. 2: because of the VCF bundles. I liken this to the ServiceNow platform. If you’re only using ServiceNow for ITSM it probably feels expensive, right? The value in the platform is leveraging all the integration that the OEMs put into that platform and getting the value out of their integration work.
Do you see a difference in enterprise customers versus SMB clients in terms of their commitment to VMware-Broadcom?
Ahead isn’t really in the SMB. We’re more in the higher-end commercial and enterprise global companies.
But from what I’m seeing, not many have just completely moved off for pricing reasons.
The opportunity for the client is, ‘Now, how do I get all the value out of VCF?’ If they do replace some of these other vendor point pieces because they’re getting it in the bundle, then it feels like it’s not as expensive.
Like, ‘I feel like I am getting a better ROI. I’m getting the outcome I wanted. I’m not having to do this integration. I have a single point vendor. I don’t have to deal with five vendors. I can deal with one.’
VMware is a really good product and hard to get off because of its history. They’ve built automation. They have all these hooks now they’ve done over time into VMware, and it just works.
So the risk versus reward for moving off VMware, most clients are not willing to do that at this point.
How is Ahead increasing its VMware services sales in 2025? How are you driving Broadcom-VMware profitability?
I feel like some partners ran away [from VMware]. We leaned in. And I feel like because we leaned in, Broadcom has leaned back into us.
We are aligned from a go-to-market and from a services perspective.
[Broadcom global channel chief] Brian Moats said in January, ‘Hey, we’re going to this partner services-led model.’ I’ve been doing this for a long time, so I’ve heard that a lot from various OEMs and with various degrees of success.
In this instance, we’ve seen 100 percent commitment from Broadcom to move services to the partner.
And because we leaned in, I feel like we may be a little bit early adopter from what other partners may be seeing at this point.
For us, it’s been a meaningful, needle-moving jump in the amount of services. We’re not talking hundreds of thousands of dollars of services here and there. We are talking about a good amount of services for us and we’re a big company.
So much so that we are increasing our resource capacity internally by 50 percent to go after this specific space around VCF. So driving the full platform and getting our clients the full outcome that they’re expecting.
Talk about how you are increasing your VMware headcount internally by 50 percent.
It’s specific to the VMware team. That was a big team for us. I have 1,700 delivery people. Our biggest group is our data center team, which a large majority of them are VMware people.
That’s between U.S. and India. So we’re doing both.
We opened up India two years ago. We roughly have 500 folks there now, growing to 1,000 by the end of this year. It’s gone really well for us. We have an integrated delivery model now between the two teams. Between both of those, that’s we’re adding about 50 percent.
We have a large service group and now we’re adding significant numbers dedicated just to VCF, because there’s so much opportunity and work there.
In the last 3 or 4 months, it’s probably one of our better service relationships across all OEMs.
Are you seeing any customers switch off of other vendors now that VMware has this full VCF stack?
Absolutely. At the end of the day, that’s part of the ROI, right? You put in a full stack that is fully integrated end to end on day one.
There’s other vendors out there that are now being replaced.
For example, you’re putting in observability with VCF. If you already have something that does that, you already bought this now inside your VCF stack. You have micro-segmentation from a network perspective with some other vendor, now you’re getting that with this stack and it’s fully integrated with everything else that you do.
So yeah, there’s definitely competitors out there that maybe are either niche or broad, but they are going to replace those vendors.
Because part of the ROI is you’re getting a fully integrated stack. So why do you need two?
Where are customers paying for VMware partner services? What’s hot right now for Ahead?
It’s not just implementing a product: it’s design, architect, integrate, implement, and then operationalize that new feature functionality we’ve now brought into the staff. That’s all services: consulting, architecture, and implementation. And then it’s day two operational stuff, whether that’s building run books or the partner managing the whole thing.
The real opportunity here is most clients today are not leveraging the full VCF stack. They have one or two components, maybe the farther ones have three, but they don’t have the full stack.
Because they’re now buying the full stack SKU, clients are going to need help. They probably have VMware skills in a couple areas, but if they didn’t have NSX in there, they probably don’t have the NSX skill.
This is where the partner can come in to help them with, ‘Hey, you bought the product. Now how do I help you get the value out of it? How do I help you deploy it? How do I help you integrate it into everything that you’re doing?’ That’s the opportunity.
The more they add to capabilities and feature functionality in VCF, like in VCF 9, that’s just more opportunity for the partner to go in show how to leverage that capability, how to get value out of that capability. Then help them deploy it and help them operationalize it.
From my perspective, it’s end-to-end services that we do—from consulting through day two operations.
Overall, are you happy with VMware-Broadcom’s partnership with Ahead?
It’s been a good partnership. We made the right bet by leaning in because my experience has been they’ve leaned back.
So we put out the olive branch, they’ve grabbed it, and it’s been a great partnership thus far. So there’s no complaints from us.
We do both services and resell multi-year VCF bundles. We’re still a big reseller from a VMware perspective.
We’re also excited about VCF 9 that’s coming out. VCF 9 is going to be big for us and for our clients. The clients are going to get a lot more out of it than they are today of the current VCF.
So overall, we feel good about their R&D and are happy with our partnership.
