Growing the Red Hat Channel

When Jim Whitehurst took the helm in late 2007 he emphasized the importance of the channel in Red Hat’s growth strategy. Red Hat’s ability to reach a billion dollars in revenue will require continuing growth and development of its channel partner program.

To that end Red Hat has made fundamental changes to ensure that we utilize our channel partners as best we can. Specifically, organizational changes have been made to align the field sales force with the channels, clear rules of engagement have been established, partner metrics have been outlined and we continue to increase our investment in the development of our channel partner ecosystem. Our goal is to have more than 60% of revenue going through the channels.

We are already seeing the impact from our focus and investments in our partner program reflected in increased revenue from our top channel partners and an increased opportunity pipeline. On Thursday, January 15th the VAR Guy published his Open Source 50; looking at 50 open source software companies that are embracing the IT channel. We are proud to have our channel program examined in this survey and to be ranked as the #1 open source channel practice. We are especially proud of the significant growth of our ecosystem which is a reflection on the commitment of our team and our partners. To learn more about our partner programs, click here.