Red Hat has pledged to pass more large account opportunities to its top resellers as part of its latest drive to ramp up indirect sales.

The open-source software vendor recently moved to clear up channel confusion by naming all the accounts with which its internal sales force works directly ­ 80 of which are based in the UK.

Petra Heinrich, EMEA channel director at Red Hat, said she intends to eventually bring top resellers in on these named accounts to help push indirect revenues above their current 65 to 70 per cent.

Heinrich said Red Hat has enlisted about 175 UK firms to the programme it launched last November. The vendor will now focus on improving the quality of its partner relations and will run a one-off campaign in the autumn for resellers working in the virtualisation space.

“Whereas two years ago virtualisation was just a buzzword, now it is a reality and it is important for us to show our capabilities around combining Linux open standards with virtualisation,” she said.

Peter Dawes-Huish, chief executive of VAR LinuxIT, said: “Historically, Red Hat has asked partners to develop the customer base and then plundered it by going direct. It has been a continual cycle of development and attrition.”