Red Hat maintains a strong working relationship with its channel ecosystem in the North of Latin America (NOLA) region. 90% of its sales are made through partners. The company recently launched its new global partner program, which offers greater flexibility and better benefits for its members.
“The new program is very modular. Today we have released the resellers modules, others for wholesalers and one that is by invitation, where there are consulting companies that help us with their influence or reselling, to orient the market according to the needs they have”, explained Iván Hernández, Director of Channels and Alliances at Red Hat for NOLA.
This program is composed of three main pillars, which are flexibility, benefits provided to its partners and the redesign of the digital platform for partners communication. Resellers can now review what points they have, the level they are at, know which accreditations and certifications they hold, and have access to training and specializations.
“All courses are free of charge. The new program rewards specialization, has a similar feature to an airline points program, the more you travel (in this case the more courses you take), the more points you get. Partners advance levels, starting with ready, the second level is advanced and our top level is premiere”, said the interviewee.
“Your sales, accreditations and certifications are accumulating points to level up. We also have certain additional scores that are delivered when a channel identifies an opportunity and registers it through the portal”
The company will be holding various sessions with its wholesalers to deepen the knowledge of the ecosystem about its new channel program, so that partners understand that they can adopt it quickly and get a great potential from it. “We are coordinating the dates for these sessions with our wholesalers. We want the partners to see us working with distributors, to know that we present the program together. Throughout August and September we will have weekly sessions throughout the region,” said Hernández.
Market opportunities
The Director of Channels and Alliances at Red Hat for NOLA identified 5 initiatives that the manufacturer is working on, which present great opportunities for partners in the region’s market.
- Artificial Intelligence. Red Hat provides its platform for data handling and operability, while constantly reinforcing the knowledge of its partners. “We want the partner to be able to process these languages to make AI models. We give developers and companies the opportunity to make optimal use of this new technology. We have 2 or 3 enablement and certification initiatives with our partners, and we are identifying allies, such as hyperscalers or IBM, companies that have knowledge of AI and are integrating it into OpenShift”, said the executive.
- Automation. The company sees a great opportunity in offering automation services that help companies become more efficient, freeing human resources from manual tasks so they can focus on organizational innovation. Red Hat has a program with partners in Latin America, particularly in NOLA, where they work on enabling and identifying opportunities to be able to meet customer demands.
- OpenShift Virtualization. With the new VMware by Broadcom marketing model, many companies have approached Red Hat for support. The manufacturer is in constant dialogue with partners to take advantage of these opportunities in the market.
- RHEL. With the seventh release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux coming to an end, the company hopes to guide businesses so they can easily adopt new generations of RHEL. “We understand that customers have stable platforms running on older versions of RHEL, and they struggle to get out of it for fear that the service may become destabilized. That’s why we have some labs and tests where we work with the partner to show the customer that they can seamlessly migrate to RHEL 8 or 9,” Hernández said.
- CentOS to RHEL. This is the community version of Linux, where the brand signals a growing demand. Red Hat has several projects already closed, where it offers customers a more stable, more corporate alternative with better support.
A dual channel strategy
According to Iván Hernández, the company’s strategy for strengthening its distribution ecosystem will be based on two pillars. On the one hand, maintaining and developing the resellers they already work with.
“There are companies that have been working with Red Hat for 10, 15 or even 20 years, who have made a very important investment with us, and we want to be faithful to that effort. The program seeks to reward that work and specialization they already have”
On the other hand, they are also interested in attracting new business partners who have the ability to take advantage of new technologies and the latest market trends.
“We talk about AI and understand that this is a new ecosystem, so we’re recruiting companies, talking to them, we’re expanding our ecosystem. The same goes for OpenShift Virtualization, there are companies that are looking for a new virtualization platform and just coming out of another ecosystem, we work with them across the region,” said the Director of Channels and Alliances at Red Hat to NOLA.
And concluded: “As far as automation is concerned, it’s a very big concept. We are talking about a specific part of automation, but there are companies that handle other solutions, such as robotics, for example, and that their offer to the market is directed at a broader concept. These companies are coming to us to automate cloud loads.”
