Red Hat Promises Partners Greater Consistency

Red Hat is promising greater consistency with both its relaunched partner program and a restructure within its EMEA channel organization.

“We want to make sure that we have not only a consistent partner program but a consistent experience,” said Red Hat’s EMEA channel leader, Penny Philpot.

The new Red Hat partner program effectively consolidates previous regional variations into one global program.

“We have had different approaches in different regions because it made sense at the time,” Philpot told Channel Futures. “Now we’re looking at having a consistent, global, unified way of working with our partners. Because partners aren’t just sat in one region; they’re working everywhere. We’re looking at taking the best of things that have happened and pulling it together.

Red Hat's Penny Philpot

“That just helps enormously, because it’s really confusing if we’re talking to partners in different languages in different areas," she continued. "So we’re trying to make it much simpler for everyone to feel and understand how to get the most out of program.”

To that end, Red Hat is also offering a simpler, activities-based framework, streamlining incentives that were not unified previously.

“We want to make sure that we’re talking to the partner in their language and being specific rather than pigeonholing everyone as vendors tend to like to do. So this program is about giving much more flex and choice around what they want to do,” said Philpot.

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The exec said Red Hat was trying to enable partners to be able “to get on and do a lot more themselves without having to rely so much on the on hand-holding.”

Red Hat Partners and EMEA Channel Reorganization

Elsewhere, the vendor is aiming to eliminate inconsistency within is EMEA channel operations. One change is that now in-country teams all report to Philpot’s EMEA organization.

Philpot – who spent 24 years at Oracle, including in a global channel leadership role – likened the situation to “herding cats” when she joined Red Hat last year.

“Now we’ve got a much stronger, aligned and intentional team going in the same direction, which I think is helping enormously," she said. “Now all of that headcount is reporting into my organization, which means that I’ve got consistency of who does what, what they’re driving towards, how they’re paid and how they’re measured. Then we’re building from there with loads of the input from all the country leaders.”

Red Hat has also introduced a Partner Advisory Board for the first time in EMEA.

“We can’t work in isolation,” said Philpot. “We’ve got a vast and rich set of partners in a very diverse region. We can’t always be the ones to know everything. We need that input. And the more people you ask, the better the input. We’re listening to our partners, and we’re bringing a program we feel that’s going to give us some … reliability and predictability with our partners," said Philpot.

Related:Red Hat Unveils Redesigned Partner Program