Aruba to Roll Out New Partner Program, Debuts Mobile First Platform

**Editor’s Note: Click here for a list of August’s important channel-program changes you should know.**

Networking provider Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) company, on Monday unveiled its new Partner Ready for Networking Program, a new Mobile First Platform and network procurement models.

The new partner program, which will launch Nov. 1, takes the “best elements” of Aruba’s PartnerEdge and HPE’s Partner Ready programs to create a new program that “enables partners to capitalize on the burgeoning enterprise mobility market opportunity,” according to Aruba.

Donna Grothjan, Aruba’s vice president of worldwide channels, tells Channel Partners that her company began planning to roll out a new partner program after HPE bought Aruba 15 months ago.

“We want to ensure that our partners have the benefit of the opportunity of this high-growth market, and the ability of this whole networking portfolio,” she said. “Therefore, we decided to go ahead and have the program focused on networking. For our partners, it’s very important to us that, No. 1, we’re very respectful of the investments that they have made in the existing and respective programs, so we want to make sure that we’re honoring all of those investments. Therefore, we will be grandfathering all of these partners into the new program effective Nov. 1 and we will ensure that they’re retaining at their highest level of membership that they’ve achieved in their respective programs for fiscal year 2016.”{ad}

The program delivers “predictable profitability” via deal protection and a simple structure that “makes it easy to calculate deal profitability at the front and back end,” Grothjan said. Partners are rewarded for specializations in cross-selling and upselling both wireless and wired services.

Partners also have the opportunity to increase margins for expertise in recognized mobility competencies, and the program offers back-end incentives for specialized networking expertise. The ability to sell extensive services, including managed services such as Aruba Central, will enhance partner margins and help them to attain trusted advisor status with their customers, she said.

In addition, the program offers a dedicated partner portal, streamlined one-page deal registration with a simplified approval process, easily understandable program requirements with a single point of contact, and planned marketing development funds and lead generation tools and services, according to Aruba.

“All of our networking products will move to a single price list and we will have this single model in place for all of our partners across the networking portfolio,” Grothjan said. “We’re really excited about the launch of this because it really gives us the opportunity to focus our partners on …

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… all of the new technology opportunities that are happening in the marketplace, especially around campus and all of the mobile engagement solutions.”

The Mobile First Platform is a software layer that uses APIs to provide third-party developers and business leaders with network insights to improve applications and services, Aruba said. The platform accelerates integration and innovation of mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) “at the speed of the developer ecosystem, rather than the pace of a single vendor,” it said.

The latest partners for the Mobile First Platform include Kasada, Envoy, Intel Security and Skyfii.

The new network procurement models to accelerate adoption include Network as a Service, Service Provider Managed Service and Management as a Service.{ad}

Ozer Dondurmacioglu, Aruba’s senior director of product and solutions marketing, tells Channel Partners his company’s business now is “providing IT solutions at the edge of the infrastructure.”

“We want to make our technology much more useful for them (distributors and resellers) to bring to market in a way that satisfies customers’ investment strategies,” he said. “If the customer would like to consume it as a service, we’re in charge of building technologies that make it easy for our SI/service provider/reseller partners to put a service around it. That’s definitely a shift from the past. We want to build technology that’s easy to consume.”