Red Hat Partner Conference: Channel Exec Answers 4 Questions

Red Hat (RHT) is hosting its partner conference next week in Scottsdale, Ariz. to unveil its channel strategy to partners, working to convince them that the company can compete with other public cloud services providers (CSPs) and software vendors like Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL) and VMware (VMW). One channel executive agreed to speak with us before the conference to provide our readers with a glimpse from the inside.

Red Hat North America Channel Sales Senior Director Jerry Lumpkin spoke with us on how the company plans to move cloud enablement forward, competition in the marketplace and key themes at next week’s partner conference.

CJ: What is Red Hat looking for in a new channel chief?

JL: As Mark Enzweiler, our senior vice president of global channel sales has said publicly, we’re looking for a strong channel leader to continue to build on what we have established over the last 6 or 7 years.

CJ: How will Red Hat continue cloud enablement moving forward?

JL: Throughout the conference, there will be significant communication around not only our cloud solutions themselves, but also around enablement and partner execution. Detailed information will be presented around our Online Partner Enablement Network (OPEN), cloud accreditation and training programs, as well as data center infrastructure and cloud readiness assessments.

CJ: How will Red Hat reveal to channel partners at the conference that it can compete with cloud and software giants like Microsoft, Oracle and VMware?

JL: We will clearly articulate Red Hat’s marketplace positioning, and provide industry analysis to help partners understand why they must do this as well as articulate how they can be successful.

CJ: What are some key themes that partners should pay close attention to at the conference?

JL: There are multiple benefits for partners coming out of the conference. Partners will get to learn best practices for successfully selling Red Hat’s broad portfolio of products. They’ll see that Red Hat is much more than Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and we’ll showcase how they can grow their business. We’ll continue to educate them around the benefits of our community-powered innovation model. Partners will also learn about the new programs around our latest platform, middleware, vitualization and cloud families.

Red Hat Partner Conference coverage

We’ve been previewing the Red Hat Partner Conference for the past couple of weeks. Here’s a summary of coverage so far.

Keep checking back for more from the Red Hat Partner Conference. And if you have any tips or insights, please feel free to email me at cj.arlotta”at”penton.com.