Transforming the Red Hat partner journey

Red Hat is committed to optimizing the way we work with and through our entire partner ecosystem to support our customers.

Before I get into what that commitment looks like for our partners, let me start by saying that working together already "works."  How do we know? The numbers tell the story: Red Hat’s growth has been fueled by partners, who globally contribute to 75+ percent of our revenue. Partners open more doors for open source than Red Hat can do alone.  We create better solutions and solve customer challenges more quickly and creatively when we work together.

That being said, there’s always room for improvement.  Being the world’s leading provider of open source for the enterprise and celebrating our 25th Anniversary doesn’t negate that fact.  As we help our customers tackle digital transformation challenges in ways to make their lives easier, some programmatic transformation to do the same for our partners is in order.

This week we’re gathering our partner network at the 2018 North America Partner Conference and I want to share some of the work currently being done to modernize, simplify and help us more closely align with our partners’ efforts. Our intent is to help accelerate time-to-market, whether it’s streamlining processes or improving interfaces and content. Here are some improvements made in the past year to our partner platform that are now available:

• Improved learning management system dedicated to partner training and accreditations.

• Enhanced sales experience that includes mobile access to simplified deal registration and short video training clips for fast microlearning on-the-go.

• New product certification workflows and technical zones for architectural guidance and assistance for software development partners.

• More marketing, sales and technical resources. Find it all on an intuitive, searchable content library. Of note, our demand generation campaigns that you can co-brand and automate through Red Hat or customize and use on your own.

• A new program name that includes an important word—partner. We’ve changed from Red Hat Connect to Red Hat Partner Connect.

I am pleased with the progress we’ve made, but even more excited about what’s to come. Here’s what we are working towards:

• Unified digital experience. We’re intent on creating a single partner portal to have a ‘one stop shop’ for technical and business resources for our entire partner community. This is one part of a broader move to look at our partner relationships more holistically across the entire ecosystem. Because at the end of the day, what program you belong to isn’t what’s important.

• Expanded addressable markets. Red Hat is focused on extending ’s footprint into the mid market and small to medium business segment at a  faster pace and we will be launching new sales plays, campaigns and analytics to support partner-led selling.

• New go-to-market strategies. Tools, content, and training to enable your teams to solve customers’ IT challenges.

What I’ve shared is just a sampling of the work that’s being done as we invest in our partners. Red Hat has been built on an open and collaborative model from our product portfolio to our programs. We appreciate and depend on continued partner feedback to make our collective support of customers the best in the industry.

Learn more about the Red Hat partner program.

Mark Enzweiler is senior vice president of Global Channel Sales and Alliances at Red Hat.