Red Hat to up channel role
Firm plans to push three-quarters of its sales through partners
Red Hat has revealed plans to push almost three-quarters of its sales through the channel by this time next year.
The move coincides with statistics from e-skills UK, the government agency charged with improving IT expertise, showing a stronger demand for Linux professionals than any other technology, apart from SQL.
However, channel players believe resellers lack the skills to satisfy growing demand for Linux, although the installed base of the open-source operating system is about to overtake that of its ancestor, Unix.
Mike Trup, managing director of Linux distributor Interactive Ideas, said: "At the enterprise level, resellers have Linux skills because they have Unix skills. But there's a bulk of resellers that service the SME market and are only Microsoft-trained.
"[Business] is going to specialists, or people end up adopting a Microsoft system."
Red Hat has just two accredited resellers. But the vendor's channel manager, Mark Baker, said he aims to double its reseller business from about 35 per cent to 70 per cent, using "upwards of 20" accredited partners.
"The SME market offers us the biggest potential," said Baker. "We've had good penetration in the corporate sector."
According to analyst IDC, the UK installed base of Linux server operating systems will overtake Unix next year. The 2003 base for Linux was 127,000, compared with 172,000 for Unix. They are expected to be equal this year.