Red Hat unveils Premier level

Open source vendor Red Hat has unveiled a new top-level tier for its EMEA infrastructure partners.

The Premier Business Partner level will sit above the current Advanced and Ready tiers and will offer resellers a range of extra marketing, pre-sales and account management incentives.

Red Hat already operates a Premier tier for its JBoss middleware partners, but is now rolling it out to its main base of infrastructure resellers.

Petra Heinrich, director of channels EMEA, said she hoped Red Hat’s six UK Advanced infrastructure partners - Computacenter, Repton, Abtech, Syan, OCSL and Fusis Group - would make the leap.

She told CRN: “A lot of partners have made the step up from Ready to Advanced, but many are even more committed and qualified.”

According to Heinrich, those that make the grade will net extra pre-sales resources, access to consulting resources, extensive marketing support and “more airspace with Red Hat”.

Heinrich also said Red Hat would ensure Premier partners do not come into conflict with its direct sales team – which she admitted had been a bugbear for resellers in the past.

She added that Red Hat has just kicked of a channel campaign around virtualisation.
Nigel Wright, UK sales director at Abtech, said: “Red Hat is starting to talk more about virtualisation, which it wasn’t great at doing to start with. It now has a more formal programme including sales and technical training and a demo centre specifically focusing on virtualisation.”