Penny Philpot, Red Hat
As vice president of Red Hat's partner ecosystem business in EMEA, Penny Philpot is responsible for driving an ecosystem-first mindset and continuing to expand the organisation's footprint across the region through valued partners. Having worked in the IT industry for over 30 years, Penny has extensive experience running partner ecosystem teams within a range of regions both within EMEA and globally, as well as building different routes to market. Previously, she held senior Global leadership roles at Microsoft, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks and Oracle where she worked for 25 years and was the youngest female vice president in Oracle EMEA.
Number of years in current role:
1
Number of years in current company:
1
Number of years involved in indirect sales:
37
Reporting to:
Stefanie Chiras, SVP of partner ecosystem success, Red Hat
What percentage of your sales come through the channel?
70 per cent.
Describe your personal channel philosophy.
I aspire to motivate and empower partners to champion Red Hat and drive incremental revenue growth for both Red Hat and their organisations. To me this means:
- A programmatic approach with business value, and delivering a profitable and simplistic partner programme;
- High cross-company engagement with key market-driving partners, and high percentage of partners contributing to incremental revenue growth;
- And a partner-centric sales engagement model for our customers.
What were your and organisation's biggest channel accomplishments over the past year?
Since arriving at Red Hat, I've transformed the team, strategy and execution of our EMEA Ecosystem business. Through extensive internal and external research I established the main challenges and drivers for the business, and worked with my reports to transition it toward scaled and incremental business growth.
This year, we revamped of the partner programme in motion, centralised alignment of partner-facing teams for consistency and higher value and alignment and engagement with hyperscalers and key partners in EMEA.
How is your company working to build equity and inclusion in the channel?
I have been fortunate to surround myself with highly talented people from all nationalities, backgrounds and diversity groups. This allows for a wider input into problem solving for success. My leadership alone has a good blend of diversity and EMEA-wide nationalities.
How is your organisation's market development strategy (MDF) changing this year?
Our new approach is to top-down view the key priorities, and have a clear and solid criteria on how MDF is allocated to support consistency, predictability and impact.
What are your top channel goals for 2024?
Migrate partners to cloud solutions, improve partner profitability and increase the amount of net new accounts coming through partners.
What were the key partner investments made over the past year?
- Partner facing resources including HC
- Partner enablement (sales and tech)
- Expanding out routes to market within the channel
- Partnership alignment with Hyperscalers and key global partners