Two-thirds of Red Hat’s top-tier UK partners have been stripped of their Advanced Business Partner (ABP) badges as part of a massive channel clear-out.

The open-source software vendor kicked off a partner re-qualification process at the start of the year. After three quarters’ grace it has weeded out those it did not feel were sufficiently committed.

Red Hat now has just six UK ABP infrastructure partners ­ – Repton, Computacenter, Abtech, Syan, OCSL and Fusis Group – ­ compared with 20 before the process started.

Petra Heinrich, Red Hat’s director of channels for EMEA, told CRN: “It was not fair to them to allow partners that did not take the programme seriously to keep the same level.”

Heinrich confirmed that Repton is close to becoming the first UK partner to qualify for Red Hat’s new Premier tier, which will sit above Advanced and reward VARs with extra marketing, pre-sales and partner manager resources.

Nigel Wright, UK sales director at Abtech, said the Premier tier is something Abtech is also looking at.

“Red Hat is being more selective about who it works with,” he added.