Tigerpaw is moving from a system of perpetual concurrent user licenses on a module by module basis to one low-priced SaaS option with everything included. While customers who have already invested in the licenses are not being forced to switch to SaaS, Tigerpaw will be offering them incents to do so.
While the company’s StorageX storage management platform is a mature product, Data Dynamics itself is a three year old startup, and is just now completing building out the channel program it wants.
Only a few parts of what’s coming to the channel from Dell was announced at Dell World, but broad sneak peeks were offered about several changes that will roll out at some point in the next fiscal year.
Dell’s overhaul of its segmented deployment services into a united ProDeploy offering takes the same step they did in support with ProSupport, and has some attractive new elements for channel partners.
The Quebec-based Canadian IT buying group has been moving beyond its traditional product focus to offer more service and solutions-focused services to its members, and has made its first foray into the RMM space with the selection of SolarWinds N-able as its preferred RMM vendor.
The expanded partnership includes both the U.S. and Canada, and opens up a relationship which previously had been limited to some Dell brands that came through acquisition and the federal government business.
The new program is also much simpler than the old, with the number of tiers cut by almost two thirds. The cloud changes won’t impact Canada though – the cloud product still isn’t available here. Canadian partners will find opportunity registration and training changes interesting however.
Salesforce introduced many exciting new solutions at Dreamforce, but for specifically partner-focused announcements, the big ones were all about training. And there were a lot of them.
Dell Canada president Kevin Peesker and channel chief Tara Fine walk through the company’s channel biz by the numbers at Dell’s Canadian Partner Summit.
The partner program has been added following Passportal’s addition of the capacity to let partners white-label their password protection services to their own customers, whereas before they simply sold their partners these services to better run their own businesses.
Mistakes were made in the last five years in terms of channel strategy, Sage admits. The vendor says it has learned from those mistakes, is now led by senior executives committed to a partner-driven strategy, and that VARs and consultants will soon see this by their deeds, not just by their words.
With a view to both expanding the number of skilled ByDesign people available to partners, and sharpening partners’ ability to use and extend the solution, SAP has launched several ByDesign initiatives, including a partner enablement portal and collaborative tool, and a certification program through Open SAP.
Dell’s channel chief offers some suggestions how companies can effectively build or improve their channel programs.
Dell indicated good progress on their green fields discount initiative, overall commercial business, and partner education efforts. While the number of partners using Dell financing jumped considerably in Q1, the company wants more participation there. Plus, still no firm date on when Dell will team up with SYNNEX in Canada.
Notable changes include funding a dedicated resource for Platinum partners, enhancing the Demo program with six months of free support and the ability to resell Demo units, and a fourfold increase in MDF funds.
While the sync and share market is hot, cloud-based offerings have limited revenue potential for the channel, something that the Transporter private cloud appliances are designed to address.
The now-implemented changes to requirements for consulting partners within Salesforce’s partner program place more emphasis on customer satisfaction and training, and will allow smaller partners to advance more easily in the program.
The changes include increased revenue requirements for all tiers, which break up what had become a top-heavy distribution of partners in a program where advancement was too easy, and permit proper incents of Barracuda’s most valuable partners.
Violin has never been a serious North American channel player before, but having remade the company with a channel-friendly product and channel-centric go-to-market platform, it has selected Arrow as its first North American distributor
The three new partner tiers all have revenue and certification requirements, and most partners will not qualify, but all partners, including those not in a tier, will receive the benefits Nimble has been providing until now, as all the new benefits to the tiers are net-new.
