Named accounts up for grabs for Red Hat channel

Open source ace allows channel to bid for business within its ring-fenced named accounts

Open source software vendor Red Hat is opening up its named account business to its reseller partners in the hope of pushing more revenue through the channel.

The vendor claims to have increased the percentage of its business which goes through the channel to 75 per cent in the UK and Ireland (UKI) region, and in a new move for 2013, has opened up the remaining quarter to resellers.

It will see Red Hat partners bid for certain business within named accounts, according to UKI head of partners Simon Williams, who said the vendor tries to work with the channel as much as possible, despite named accounts requiring a closer relationship with Red Hat for technical reasons.

"We have further opened up [the deal registration programme] and made it available for named accounts to drive net new business," he said, adding that the move will boost proactivity in the channel.

The vendor currently has 21 top and middle-tier partners in the UKI region including Insight, Computacenter and Kelway as well as about 500 lower-level Ready partners. It claimed that it is not looking to recruit more VARs, but aims to make them more productive and deepen their links with them.

The vendor claimed that recent government initiatives to adopt most cost-effective technology including open source has been good for the company, which also enjoys strong traction in the banking and finance markets.

Red Hat's vice president for partners and alliances in EMEA Petra Heinrich conceded that some partners are reluctant to adopt open source software and urged more to consider the technology.

She said: "[Partners should] wake up and consider how you can get more out of open source. There is a big wide space around a lot of interesting technology and we see partners are not adopting it. They are not creative enough to ask ‘how can I make money out of this and how can I get the customer closer by selling this technology?' They need to be more active."

Williams added: "If you look at virtualisation and storage we have expanded into, the addressable revenue opportunity is vast. And it has grown – there is a lot more work for partners to address the wallet share for enterprise too. The opportunity is undoubtedly maximised for partners who take a proactive stance. There is a significant services opportunity – that is where the max returns are."