Red Hat green-lights indirect growth

Open-source giant sets channel growth target

Red Hat has admitted it needs to bolster its processes and systems as it strives to be a 75 per cent indirect outfit by next year.

The open-source ace recently launched its first deal registration programme and claimed the enhanced Partner Centre it sits on will improve its communications with partners.

Talking to CRN, Petra Heinrich, EMEA vice president of partners and alliances at Red Hat, admitted the fast-growing vendor's partner support had not always kept pace with its frenetic growth.

"We need to get our act together on processes and systems," she said.

"Overall [this year] I am aiming to run 70 per cent through the indirect route, including OEMs, and we are pretty close to that," she said. "Next year I have a target of 75 per cent."

The new deal registration offers top- and mid-tier Premier and Advanced partners an additional 10 or six per cent front-end discount.

Frank Basinski, manager of partner programmes EMEA, said deal registration was now a necessity to ensure its partners remain competitive.

"We have come from having no partner programme and 300 loose partner relationships across EMEA to having 3,500 across the region," he said. "We are coming at the right time with this as more and more of the really large partners want a relationship with us and they compete in a different [more competitive] market than the niche resellers we had three years ago."