Red Hat Continues North America Partner Program Momentum

SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ. – January 14, 2014 – Red Hat North America Partner Conference– Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced continued momentum and program enhancements for its North America channel partner ecosystem. As businesses look for ways to build and manage architectures to on-ramp to the open hybrid cloud, Red Hat has made considerable efforts to enhance its partner program to provide additional benefits and support to Red Hat partners.

Red Hat’s channel ecosystem continues to grow and influence Red Hat’s total annual revenue, which came to $1.33B in fiscal year (FY) 2013. Partners continue to be a growth driver for Red Hat, representing 60 percent of total bookings in FY2013 and 65 percent in the most recent quarter (Q3FY14). One of the keys to Red Hat partners’ success over the years has been an open dialogue around what they need from Red Hat to help them respond to market demands. This process has driven several enhancements this year to Red Hat’s North America Partner program, including:

Revamped Partner Program
Red Hat unveiled their revamped North America Partner Program in September 2013. The program features enhancements to Red Hat’s Deal Registration and Teaming Incentive programs, as well as Red Hat’s Online Partner Enablement Network (OPEN). Through the revamped North America Partner Program, Red Hat intends to drive and build more relevant relationships with partners, helping them differentiate themselves in the market and be more profitable in their relationship with Red Hat.

Red Hat Deal Registration Program
Effective Sept. 1, 2013, Red Hat introduced a new Deal Registration Program designed to provide approved Red Hat Premier, Advanced, and Ready Business Partners with the ability to accrue additional benefits when a partner identifies new Red Hat business opportunities and engages in value added pre-sales activity in support of the growth of Red Hat business. Red Hat’s Deal Registration Program focuses on new business opportunities and targeted sales initiatives where Red Hat’s top business partners have invested in identifying new customers, or have co-invested in complimentary training around integrated Red Hat marketing campaigns. The new deal registration benefits are 10 percent for Red Hat Ready partners, 20 percent for Advanced partners, and 25 percent for Premier partners. Benefits to all partners include priority resource allocation, increased margins, rewards for new business growth, sales alignment, and support from Red Hat sales and technical resources. A key element of this program is its multiple year renewal protection. With it, deal registration benefits are available on the initial order and two subsequent annual renewals.

Red Hat Teaming Incentive Program
Teaming agreements assist in engaging sales teams and act as a mechanism for collaboration, encouraging teams to work together to develop and drive net-new business. Through its new Teaming Incentive Program which also took effect Sept. 1, 2013, Red Hat rewards its partners with an incremental value incentive discount (VID) for value-add, pre-sale activities when teaming early with Red Hat on opportunities. The value incentive discount for approved Teaming Incentive Program deals are unique to the partners that the Red Hat channel and account teams select for opportunities. Under this program, eligible Red Hat Premier and Advanced partners can receive a VID of 15 percent while eligible Red Hat Ready partners can receive a VID of 10 percent for all approved opportunities.

In addition to the above enhancements which are geared towards commercial partners, Red Hat’s Public Sector Partner Program continues to offer its Preferred Pricing program. This program encourages partners to pursue new opportunities and upsell existing renewals. While minor changes were made effective Oct. 1, 2013, to establish a minimum deal size ($20K MSRP), the program’s core elements remain the same. Public sector partners can email govchannel@redhat.com for more details.

Online Partner Enablement Network (OPEN)
In addition to enhancements and changes mentioned above, Red Hat also officially launched its Online Partner Enablement Network (OPEN) in November 2013. OPEN is a training and accreditation platform designed to empower partners and supply them with the reliable guidance and technical information they need to assist customers in making sound technology decisions. Red Hat’s OPEN offering includes a technical library, an on-line demo system, and on-line role based training. The technical library shares white papers, reference architectures, slides, and a variety of artifacts all tagged and current. This enables Red Hat to share what resources we’ve found most useful in the field with our trusted partners. The Red Hat Partner Demo System is available to Advanced and Premier partners offering on-line and on-demand access to Red Hat demo environments providing an environment for learning and demoing our product portfolio. The on-line training provides training across our product portfolio for sales, sales engineer, and delivery roles with supporting individual and partner-level accreditations.

North America Partner Authorization Program
A recent addition to our partner benefits includes the North America Partner Authorization program for our new and emerging products. The authorization program provides early adopter access to sell and deliver Red Hat’s emerging technologies. Authorizations, including required accreditations for middleware, cloud and storage, are meant to enhance partner skills across sales, sales engineer, and delivery competencies. The authorization program is designed to protect partners’ investments in sales and support activities by requiring minimum accreditations in order to sell these new solutions.

For more information, please visit Red Hat's Partner Center or email na-partner-helpdesk@redhat.com.

Supporting Quotes
Arun Oberoi, executive vice president, Global Sales and Services, Red Hat
"Red Hat's richly expanded product portfolio of open hybrid cloud solutions, are primed to help partners enable Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service for our customers in an enterprise class open source development model. The increased mainstream adoption of open source to enable next generation infrastructure presents an exciting business momentum opportunity for our partners.”

Frank Seiferth, senior director, IIS
"The revamped Red Hat partner program has certainly raised the bar by addressing three main areas that every partner requires for success: a deal registration program that provides a predictable profitability model, investment protection for identifying and actively working new customer opportunities, and access to a relevant simple-to-use training curriculum. Through the use of customer teaming agreements, partners are embraced as an extension of the Red Hat sales and marketing teams into existing accounts. These changes, plus extended deal registrations for two additional periods, have the attention of our sales teams."

Peter Larocque, president, North America Distribution, SYNNEX Corporation  
“Through our partnership with Red Hat, SYNNEX is able to offer strategic, game-changing services to our resellers and their customers such as technical support and demos, proof of concepts, a fully dedicated sales team and an expanded portfolio of open source solutions. Together, Red Hat and SYNNEX provide resellers and their customers new ways to differentiate themselves as the IT landscape continues to evolve. We look forward to building upon our relationship with Red Hat and maintaining strategic relationships with Red Hat’s other partners as they continue to gain momentum in the channel and implement innovative program enhancements.”

Additional Resources

• More about Red Hat OPEN
• More about Red Hat Partner Center
• Interact with Red Hat’s Partner Program

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About Red Hat, Inc.
Red Hat is the world's leading provider of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting services. As the connective hub in a global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities, Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that liberate resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT. Learn more at http://www.redhat.com.

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