Solace Targets IoT with New Partner Program

Solace, a messaging and event broker service provider, has unveiled its new IoT Solutions Partner Program designed to accelerate the time to value for enterprises implementing IoT initiatives.

Solace will partner with providers of IoT platforms, services and technologies to deliver integrated, event-enabled solutions for connected vehicle and digital manufacturing in the automotive sector, smart grid/metering for utilities and transportation, and logistics projects such as fleet management and positive train control.

Solace’s Ricardo Gomez-Ulmke

Ricardo Gomez-Ulmke, Solace’s vice president of IoT, tells Channel Partners this is an extension of a longstanding partner program and is creating a “focus to partner specifically around IoT across a number of verticals.”

“Solace’s approach is quite unique — we are authoring a reference architecture for IoT, inviting partners to participate in a reference implementation,” he said. “The result is a ‘best-of-breed’ approach, combining the experts and technology leaders in their respective fields. It’s agile and flexible, whilst creating the industrial strength required for large-scale rollout.”

Solace sees a need specifically to address IoT, Gomez-Ulmke said.

“In such a fragmented market with literally hundreds of choices of so-called IoT platforms, this program provides the agility and flexibility for our customers to mix and match the best-in-class technologies into their custom IoT platform to suit their particular needs and use cases,” he said.

The program is focused on:

Partners will be authorized to earn incentives associated with lead referrals, resale and OEM, and have benefits including technical skills, product and co-marketing. Solace will work with partners to create go-to-market plans that drive market awareness and open new IoT market opportunities, the company said.

“Solace has a longstanding history of working with partners,” Gomez-Ulmke said. “IoT is an ecosystem play — no single company can cover all the elements required to create a successful platform and business around IoT. This also extends to our customers — we see a lot of cases where our customers also become our partners. And partners in different areas, like financial services, have transferable technologies into IoT.”

“F5 and Solace have partnered to deliver leading IoT solutions for automotive and smart city initiatives,” said Frank Strobel, F5 Networks‘ director of IoT and security alliances. “This has resulted in the delivery of highly scalable, geographically distributed, event-enabled IoT solutions. F5 is excited to partner with Solace through the IoT Solutions Partner Program to further reduce the time to value in IoT projects spanning IoT edge devices, applications and IT systems across cloud, on-premise[s] and hybrid-cloud environments.”