Viptela's First Partner Program Addresses 'Channel Failures'

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

SD-WAN provider Viptela on Thursday launched its new vForce Global Partner Program with more than 40 vendor and channel partners, such as Verizon, Dimension Data, World Wide Technology and Prosys.

This is the company’s first partner program. It provides a comprehensive suite of go-to-market support, financial incentives and training resources aimed at helping its partners deliver the business benefits of SD-WAN to enterprises. According to Gartner, 30 percent of enterprises will use SD-WAN products by the end of 2019, compared to 1 percent today.

Anthony D’Angelo, Viptela’s vice president of worldwide channel sales, tells Channel Partners that this was the right time for Viptela to invest in the channel since the migration to the cloud and hybrid IT infrastructures has “accelerated the urgency among enterprises for deploying SD-WAN.”

“As a result, they are desperately looking for solutions,” he said. “Viptela has the most mature and largest deployments in the industry – approximately 15,000 – mainly among the Fortune 500. We are offering partners a proven, scalable platform that is backed by a channel-centric program that is focused on their profitability. The market opportunity is huge and we are looking for partners who want to lead the enterprise migration to SD-WAN instead of watching their competition do it.”{ad}

The program was built using input from Viptela partners, D’Angelo said.

“It is designed to be simple, profitable, predictable and address the following four channel failures that are common with legacy vendors and stand in the way of partner success: conflict with direct sales … complex, slow, costly on-boarding … weak deal-registration programs that still leave room for competitors to drive down margins … (and) reduced profit when the deal gets competitive,” he said. “Partners routinely complain about these channel-sales deterrents and yet vendors keep …

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… building their programs this way. Our program, like our technology, is purpose-built, not cobbled together. We actively wanted to challenge the existing model.”

The program doesn’t include “convoluted tiers that are hard to navigate, come with audits and bureaucracy, or give volume-based pricing advantages to partners who come in late to the opportunity,” D’Angelo said.

“We don’t force partners to jump through hoops or require them to prove they have ‘skin in the game’ by making investments before they are ready,” he said. “Instead of checking off a long list of tasks and requirements, we prefer to focus on doing what is right and necessary for our success. Partners don’t need to be told how to run their business; they know it better than anyone.”

“Viptela understands that channel partners are the fuel that drives this fast-growing market,” said Barry Cooper, vice president of marketing at Fishtech Labs. “Viptela offered above industry-standard margins and excellent support that accelerated our go to market strategy. By removing obstacles, unnecessary qualifications and delays, we were able to hit the ground running.”