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Red Hat is hoping to boost its partner engagement with its recently launched hypervisor, Rev, based on the Kernel-Based Virtual Machine (KVM) technology.
“Initially, we are looking at 25 VARs for Rev. But, eventually we will expand that number,” said Jaideep Kumar, Head, Channels and Distribution, Red Hat India.
According to Kumar, Rev has been very well received by partners. At Red Hat’s recently held Asia-Pacific partner summit at Singapore, the hypervisor generated a huge interest.
“We expect Rev to be a complete game changer. It would further deepen our offering into the core IT infrastructure segment. We did have virtualization products earlier. But with Rev, significant challenges to virtualization like advanced manageability and interoperability will be resolved. So, that makes a huge difference,” said Kumar.
With virtualization finally going mainstream in India, said Kumar, it presented a big opportunity for partners. “We see organizations across verticals taking keen interest in virtualization. SMBs too are beginning to adopt it. We see that as the most significant trend.”
“Small companies in sectors like travel and tourism and exports also keen to consolidate and virtualize their infrastructure of 5-6 servers. So clearly, virtualization spells a big opportunity for channel,” he added.
According to Kumar, Red Hat is also planning to create a higher partner level in addition to the existing Ready Partners (RP) and Advanced Business Partners (ABP). To be called Premier Business Partner (PBP), the new level will offer VARs expanded sales training, lead distribution, and demand generation campaigns, as well as market development funds and technical support.
Based on their competencies, Red Hat will be moving some RPs to ABP and promote several ABPs to the PBP level. “We typically like to work with partners for one year before moving them up to a more advanced level. Pre-requisites for the more advanced ABP and PBP levels will obviously be commitment to our products, past performance and future potential,” he said.
Kumar said the company plans to raise the number of ABPs from the current 40 to 100 by the end of 2010. “Our distributors Ingram Micro, Integra Solutions and GT Enterprises will play a key role in ramping up our channel,” added Kumar.
According to Kumar, the company was investing a lot in training partners’ sales teams through initiatives like Red Hat Sales Colleges. “Over the last few years, the growth of open source solutions was hindered due to lack of trained manpower. So we have invested a lot in certifications and training professionals. We do not want our growth to be curtailed due to lack of skill-sets,” concluded Kumar. |