14 New, Changing Channel Programs: SonicWall, Ingram Micro, Cisco, More
Some vendors are introducing new resources for partners, while the "partner-first" philosophy takes hold.
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Cisco shared details of its new SMB field sales model.
The strategy, dubbed “scale,” supports channel partners, which Cisco is leaning on heavily for customer sales and services. Territory managers, akin to a regional CEO, support the partners, as do business development reps, sales acceleration personnel and practice specialists.
Read more about Cisco’s SMB partner strategy.
HPE‘s channel leader reiterated the company’s support for managed service providers.
With the company rapidly nearing the Nov. 1 launch of its new Partner Ready Vantage program, HPE vice president of worldwide channel and partner ecosystems Simon Ewington told MSPs that they are very much on the vendor’s radar.
Technology providers, managed service providers and cloud service providers (CSPs) will participate in the program.
Jeff O’Heir wrote about HPE.
Endpoint security provider CrowdStrike gave channel partners a rewards “debit card” in its latest program update.
Sales people and sales engineers who close with CrowdStrike deals get nearly immediate cashback awards in their card balance.
CrowdCard exists in addition to the vendor’s incentive programs.
Edward Gately wrote about CrowdsStrike.
Mimecast is expanding its reseller program into France and other countries beyond the U.S. and the U.K.
The email security provider recently completed a pilot program in advance of uniting all of its partner programs under the Mimecast Partner One banner in fiscal year 2025. That includes MSP and technology partners.
Get details on Mimecast’s partner program.
SonicWall is introducing “aggressive discount levels” for partners selling to new customer accounts.
The discounts, which all partner tiers can access, ease the cost of customer acquisition, according to SonicWall.
Among many changes that stemmed from partner feedback, SonicWall is allowing partners to access benefits before committing to training or business planning with the supplier.
Those updates come a couple months after Michelle Ragusa-McBain took the helm of the vendor’s channel.
Christine Horton summarized the changes in her article.
Identity and access management provider Okta said it has shifted to a partner-first strategy.
The vendor stayed quite mum on the actual details of the new approach to the channel. One exec said the entire company will “embrace partners in a way that we’ve never embraced them before.” And he stressed that the shift is taking place from the top all the way down the organization.
Dell, IBM and ServiceNow have also made similar announcements.
Christine Horton covered Okta’s strategy update.