Three key changes to NetApp's Unified Partner Programme
NetApp’s Kristian Kerr talks to CRN about the key changes to the partner programme, including new rebates and rewards
NetApp has announced a host of changes to its Unified Partner Programme, including new rewards, more "predictable and transparent" rebates and an increased focus on "specialisation" and cloud, which it says will make partners more money.
The vendor says it will expand its partner ecosystem by increasing the number of specialist partners in its portfolio, including by introducing new specialisations such as AI, data protection, data security, infrastructure and more.
More focus will be placed on the cloud, NetApp says, having last year acquired cloud computing company Spot, with the vendor claiming it will certify partners to go out and sell cloud products through its Keystone initiative to provide "significant rewards and incentives".
And there will be new rewards and rebates aimed at partners who attract new business for NetApp products and services, "simplified" and "predictable" incentives around key initiatives and personal rewards for partner staff who play important roles in securing business.
The NetApp partner locator is also being redesigned for a "better user experience", which NetApp says will "help customers find the most specialised partners to meet their needs".
Some of the changes will be implemented now, the vendor says, whereas others will be "phased in" over time.
Here is what NetApp's VP of EMEA channel sales, Kristian Kerr, had to say to CRN about the key changes to the partner programme:
New rebates, rewards and changes to incentives
"We will be gearing rewards and incentives to support hunting partners, and especially partners that are going to be capturing new workloads within our existing and new accounts.
"So, if a partner registers to do deals and they have discovered the opportunity, even if it's in their existing account of ours, they will get an accelerated rebate for recognising the value that they brought into that sales opportunity.
"And we will also be opening up for Gold, Platinum and Star partners, a new commercial account rebate, so we're going to be paying a rebate which is stackable that will recognise and reward partners for hunting new business, especially in our commercial segment. That's in our segment outside global accounts and enterprise.
"We're introducing rewards for partners and this will be in some areas, rebate, and others, it will be personal rewards. So, individuals will accrue points that then they can go and spend on a whole catalogue of items from travel to electronics.
"We're launching that for competitive takeout and acquisition accounts. We will also publish a list of around 500 accounts across Europe, Middle East and Africa. These are tough target enterprise accounts that we want to go and acquire from our competition.
"On top of that, we will reward partners for renewals when it comes to renewing existing services contracts.
"I think one of the biggest changes for our Star and global Star partners is the predictable rebates. We will pay rebates from dollar one so as soon as they start selling, or transacting, they'll start to earn a rebate.
"And then, depending on what level they are in the program, there will be an incentive for partner initiated and an incentive for renewals and there'll be a percentage up to 10 percent for commercial new logo.
"There is an opportunity for partners to make a decent amount of money, much more than under the current rebate structure."
Increased specialisation and new services
"We're creating a much more flexible partner programme that is more suited to the evolving ecosystem.
"We realised that there are specialist partners who were born in the cloud, native cloud partners, boutique consultants, who operate in the AI space or around certain enterprise applications like SAP.
"So, we also want to make sure that we can engage and attract those types of organisations and they don't have to jump through a whole bunch of hoops and certifications and technical accreditations just to start getting on board within our partner programme.
"We're introducing, in the next month, the AI machine learning specialisation, a data protection and data security (specialisation), we're also hosting service provider for managed service partners and infrastructure specialisation, and also Spot which was a relatively recent cloud acquisition.
"We also, in parallel, will be launching some services specialisations as well. We're going to have an integration services, certified armour Lifecycle Services partner and then we'll also have the NetApp Keystone Services partner.
"Keystone is our flexible cloud consumption model so partners will be able to get certified to go out and sell and co-sell that Keystone cloud consumption offering."
Focus on cloud
"We're doubling down on cloud with fairly significant rewards and incentives to drive partner profitability in the cloud space and to make it easier for our existing partners to make money out of the cloud.
"There's an emerging ecosystem of cloud-only partners so we want to be able to engage with and motivate those types of partners. And they might be partners that operate within the world's biggest public clouds like AWS with Google and we want to make it easier to engage with those types of partners.
"We will be launching a ‘sell with' incentive. Partners will need to get specialisation and then there will be an incentive for selling with or co-selling that cloud consumption with partners.
"We are very much going to be rewarding differentiation and that's going to be through the specialisations."