Akamai Expanding Advisor Channel, Recruiting Compute Services Partners

Symbiotic relationships are forming between consulting and sales-minded technology advisors (TAs), and services-minded systems integrators (SIs), Akamai channel leader Dave Allen said.

Allen serves as vice president of sales and services at the content delivery provider, which in recent years has moved into cybersecurity and cloud computing. Allen said Akamai channel partners are playing a bigger role than ever as the company expands into new technology and new customer segments. Moreover, partners' varied strengths are meshing well, Allen told Channel Futures.

Technology advisors, who are selling through tech services distributor Avant, represent Akamai's fastest growing source of pipeline. At the same time, systems integrators and MSPs are playing a bigger role in fulfilling professional and managed services on behalf of advisors and Akamai.

Allen broke down the nuances of of the Akamai partner organization in an interview with Channel Futures. The interview transcript has been edited for clarity.

Akamai's Dave Allen

Channel Futures: Are there updates to the Akamai channel program?

Dave Allen: There's three major parts to Akamai's business from an offering standpoint: content delivery, security, and now compute. The first 15 years of our 25-year history was focused on content delivery with our proprietary global network. But then as we moved into the security space, and in the last couple of years into compute — that's really when we embraced our partner ecosystem, and more recently with tech services distributors (TSDs). We are partner-only in terms of new customer acquisition. That is an update. Any new customer that we bring on board, whether Akamai sources the the opportunity or the partner does, our go-to-market motion is with partners. And with our existing install base, of which we do still have existing direct customers, no customer is off-limits to our partners. We are very happy to move business to partners if they can help us retain and grow that business.

Related:Akamai, WWT Expand Strategic Partnership for Security Solutions

View the full Q&A in the slideshow above.