Can the Channel Find Love with HP Again?

by Diane Krakora, CEO

Really, HP and VMware?  Partner conferences in Vegas on the same three days, over Valentine’s Day?  I’m here at the HP Global Partner Conference, and we’re spending a lot of time talking about relationships.  Both the relationship between HP and their partners and the relationship between solution providers and customers are changing. Continue reading →

The Ultimate Hand-off in Getting Cloud-Ready: Vendors and Channel Partners Mature Professional Services Engagement

Vendors and Channel Partners Mature Professional Services Engagement

by Beth Vanni, Vice President

The passing of the baton from vendor to solution provider around effective and profitable professional services delivery is what we call the “last mile of being a channel-centric company”.  It’s hard stuff.  And, it calls into focus the intentions and revenue goals of the vendor’s direct delivery of professional services.   We see 2012 as a turning-point year in vendors getting this issue right, and striking the balance between how to share IP and learnings from their own large-account engagements without interfering with the partners’ own unique and often multi-vendor solution approach.

And there’s a lot at stake in professional services execution this year.  Customers are demanding their suppliers and solution providers understand their technical and business pain points and understand their core business process better than ever.  Plus, many agree that success with virtualization and other application integration professional services projects paves the way toward solution providers building a successful cloud practice. Continue reading →

Service Provider – Partner of Today (not the Future) for VMware

Cloud Infrastructure Provider Ranks Grow to 1500 and Post 200%+ Revenue Growth

Beth Vanni – Vice President, PartnerPath

Many channel pundits agree that service providers are the channel segment to watch for innovation in cloud services delivery. Whether they’re coming from an existing MSP business model, a telco carrier profile or a built-on-the-cloud orientation, vendors have been shifting their field teams, pricing models and technical support to help these providers be set up for cloud success.

VMware started beating this channel drum about 24 months ago in a big way.  And, at this year’s Partner Exchange event, it seems this community (labeled VSPPs by VMware) is a key pillar of VMware’s cloud partnering strategy aimed at helping it compete for partner investment and mindshare against its more traditional enterprise software competitors. Continue reading →

Seven Signs VMware is Doubling Down its Bet on SMB:

          A View from VMware Partner Exchange 2012 in Sin City

by Beth Vanni, Vice President

When you achieve 32% year over year growth in a tough economy on a revenue base of over $3billion , it’s likely you’ve either got really hot technology and/or your business strategy is right on target.  VMware has both going for it right now.  And, as they look to propel themselves into a broader position as the #1 cloud services development platform, their performance in the SMB market is a fundamental tenet in how they’re going to get there.

Company execs at this week’s annual Partner Exchange event shared current research that shows SMB customers have only virtualized about 20% of their IT infrastructure.  And, clearly, the trend toward desktop virtualization delivered as a cloud service is attractive to these companies.  However, in the past the virtualization giant was criticized (including by us!) for doing a major land-grab for SMB partners before their portfolio or channel programs were ready. Continue reading →

Targeting Kindergartners? Social Media Marketing Reaches an All-Time High (or Low)

by Beth Vanni, Vice President

I can appreciate creative marketing as much, if not more, than most.  And, especially in technology markets where there is typically a dearth of creative marketing.  But a recent technique used by one of the group coupon sites really had me thinking – can solution providers really ever get the hang of what it takes to market in the web 2.0 era? Continue reading →

Is 2012 the Year of “Deal Registrations”?

by Sallie Martin, Consultant

In this year’s 2012 State of Partnering Study, both vendors and solution providers were bullish on growth for the channel. Over the past 2-3 years, the vendor community has really focused their drive for enablement on technical skills, sales prospecting skills and service delivery skills. They’ve been prepping the partner community to come out of their economic storm with specialized skills and proactive marketing. The incentives for driving market penetration and growth such as deal registrations and rich growth rebates are now the standard in many partner programs.

So, is this year going to be the year for more deal registrations from vendors? Solution providers currently have a plethora of program incentives to choose from to help them with increasing selling activity.  There is everything from MDF and SPIF programs to traditional Co-Op.  So why should a vendor add yet another in the form of deal registration?  To begin with, is deal registration considered an incentive?

To answer the question, you first need to know what value deal registration brings to a vendor.  It is a reward to the partner that:

· Gives vendor visibility into a partner’s pipeline
· Helps to minimize channel conflict between the vendor direct and   indirect teams
· Similarly, reduces conflict from partner to partner
· Some programs pay for efforts of partners to close net new business
· If managed properly, can build trust between vendor and partner

The key word above is “reward.”  There are many key factors to make deal registration effective.  However, in the partner’s eyes, they have to receive a benefit for allowing a vendor to see behind the curtain of their pipeline.  The only way a vendor can do this effectively is to give the partner a reward.  Each vendor will have a different philosophy on the behavior that they want to encourage. This incentive normally comes in two forms. The first is up front discounts that a rep can apply to the deal to compete effectively.  The second form is back-end rebates.  This incentive is paid after the deal closes and normally is applied to the partner’s bottom line (as opposed to a SPIF for the sales rep).

In the long term, deal registration is a win-win situation for both the vendor and the partner.  The vendor receives the benefits mentioned above and the partner is rewarded for their efforts. PartnerPath’s 2012 State of Partnering Study highlights program such as deal registration and other growth incentives aimed at increasing selling activity, as becoming common practice. Partners now expect deal registration, which has contributed to the increasing investment trend.   Forward movement like this can only help to drive successful partner-vendor relationships.

Distributors Cloud Services Become a Reality

Tech Data Launches One-Stop Cloud Shop

by Beth Vanni, Vice President

Imagine a new ecosystem, a single place to aggregate all ISV and cloud providers into a single B-to-B app store. A marketplace integrated into one platform to do all the marketing, sales, distribution, provisioning, billing and management of a wide variety of cloud software in the channel. An easy way to accelerate the adoption of cloud services – and put the traditional reseller right in the middle of it.

Continue reading →

What is in a Name?

by Diane Krakora – CEO

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

 - Juliet, Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

Boy, I certainly hope William Shakespeare was right! After 14 years we changed our name from Amazon Consulting to PartnerPath. “Why, oh Why?” you might cry!  After working extremely diligently to build a brand that (we hope) stands for amazing channel and alliance development, why would we change it?  Continue reading →

Amazon Consulting’s Approach to a Unified Global Partner Program

by Diane Krakora – CEO

In our previous blog post, we introduced Quest Software and its business partner needs. Unifying the channel program for Quest and its partner community became a vital corporate priority. Quest engaged Amazon Consulting to help build collaboration with industry partners, increase opportunities for partners to grow sales and profitability and deliver greater customer satisfaction. Continue reading →

SAP’s Cloud Strategy and Partner Ecosystem:

Can the Software Giant become Accessible, Flexible and Mobile?

by Beth Vanni – Vice President

At the recent SAP Influencer Summit, the software giant came out swinging around their ability to extend their market dominance in applications to the cloud arena. But can their approach to partnering be part of that new religion and give them the flexibility, innovation and scale they defend and grow their marketshare against Salesforce.com, Microsoft, Oracle and others?

Continue reading →