Riverbed Technology, the leader in application performance infrastructure, has announced important improvements to its partner programme that will simplify processes, training and competency certification to help partners capitalise on new market prospects and accelerate their growth.
The new programme reinforces that Riverbed is committed to the channel with increased investment and focus on its partners’ go-to-market efforts.
The changes to the Riverbed Partner Programme include:
* Enhanced partner benefits. Partners who invest in certifications and training will receive increased benefits, with enhanced features to reward high performance and growth.
* Simplifying business processes. Riverbed has improved sales opportunity workflow and policies and is implementing a Deal Desk to drive best practice sales engagements globally.
Riverbed is also aligning opportunities and leads to partners with a certified solutions focus. In addition, new partner dashboards and quarterly reporting will provide partners with up-to-date status on programme compliance, discount levels per product, opportunity tracking and more.
* Streamlining training and certification. Partners can take advantage of updated online sales and technical pre-sales training on all Riverbed products and solutions for accreditation. Riverbed is investing in additional virtual labs, field roadshows and advanced certification training for both pre-sales and post-sales.
* Changing to a new competency model. Riverbed is also moving from a traditional revenue-attainment pyramid model to a competency model. This will allow the company to align its investments and resources to partners that either have a specific solution focus or can go wide and deep with Riverbed solutions.
* The four competencies as part of the 2014 programme are WAN Optimisation, Storage Delivery, Application Delivery and Performance Management. Partners must be certified on the products that are part of a specific competency in order to receive programme benefits relating to those products.
* Simplifying partner levels. In addition, Riverbed has simplified the programme by reducing the previous four partner levels down to three: Elite Partners; Premier Partners; and Authorised Partners
“This is an exciting time for Riverbed and our partners,” says David Peranich, president, Worldwide Field Operations at Riverbed Technology.
“We are investing in key areas to simplify the program, improve partner opportunities and differentiate and reward partners based on their competency and investment in Riverbed products and solutions. We are making these enhancements to accelerate growth, expand into new markets and better serve our customers.”
“Riverbed has put tremendous thought into this new programme framework and structure,” says John Coleman, director of NetComm, Product and Partner Management at CDW. “We are looking forward to continued participation and success as our two companies collaborate to support our joint customers.”
“This is a healthy change,” says Mike Nowlan, vice president – Security, Virtualisation and Networking at Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions, a Riverbed partner. “Riverbed has brought on a number of products over the last two years and a programme change makes sense. We are seeing other product manufacturers making similar changes.”