Tag: partner

Dell EMC announces its stairway to heaven partner plan

Posted on February 9, 2017 by - News

stairwayDell EMC has finally told its partners what they will have to do to qualify for its new partner programme tiers.

The Dell EMC Partner Programme launched yesterday with Michael Dell himself insisting on a video that the channel is important to him personally. However partners did not know what they would have to do to qualify for the Gold, Platinum and Titanium tiers.

As Dell EMC’s EMEA boss Michael Collins said there were two paths you could go on, but in the long run, there’s still time to change the road you are on.

The first path involves high revenue targets and low training achievements, and another which has much higher training targets but less of a focus on revenue.

Collins said, is designed to help smaller, specialist partners remain competitive in the programme.

There are two paths per “bucket” of countries in EMEA – one bucket of bigger countries: the UK, Germany and France; and the other bucket consisting of the rest of EMEA.

UK partners will be mostly focused on revenue, and less on training. They much sell between $3- $7 million to achieve gold, with $400,000 of that coming from services. To achieve Platinum, partners must sell between $15 million and $25 million of the Dell EMC portfolio – including $1.6 million of services. Those who would be Titanium, must hit an overall revenue target of between $35 and $45 million with $3.2 million of services.

The UK’s training-focused path has smaller revenue requirements. Gold partners must achieve between $500,000 and a million in sales, with $60,000 coming from services. Platinum partners must sell between $3-$7 million in revenue, including $600,000 from services. To be crowned with Titanium, partners need to hit between $15 and $25 million in sales and have $2.4 million coming from services.

The targets for UK partners are higher than for the rest of EMEA.

There is a last tier called Titanium Black which is a status within the top-level Titanium tier. That seems to be dished out on the whim of Dell-EMC and will mean that other partners must stand when they enter the room and they will get the first choice when the chocolate buscuits are passed around during meetings. Actually, we made that up we have no idea of what you get if you are Titanium Black.

For this year, Dell EMC partners have been “status matched”, meaning their position on the Dell EMC Partner Programme is determined on where they finished on the legacy Dell or EMC programmes last year.

Juniper spruces up partner programme

Posted on August 18, 2016 by - News

JuniperBerriesJuniper Networks has announced some updates to its partner advantage programme in a bid to reward the better performers.

The “Elite” tier has some new categories including cloud services provider, next gen and rising star,  which will give Juniper to rank its partners better. .

A points-based reward schemehas been introduced so that partners can manage and track deals quicker. That programme starts  next month.

Matt Hurley, corporate VP, global channels and field marketing at Juniper, wrote in the company bog:

“As we built out the Juniper Partner Advantage program in 2016, we found that customer demands were changing and our channel partners were reshaping their business models to address those changes.  To account for these changes in partners’ business models, we’ve created new categories within the Elite level of the Juniper Partner Advantage programme. These new categories enrich the Elite partner tier, which is our highest, most operationally sophisticated partner level. Adding new categories within the tier allows us to place partners at the optimal part of the program that works best for their business needs.”

A Next Gen partner is one involved with software, services and XaaS. Rising stars will head to the  Elite level and will be invited to join based on their business plans.

Referencing the other development in the rewards programme it would make life easier for partners, Hurley said

“In addition to a greatly enhanced user interface for claims submissions, the new program is integrated with our updated Deal Registration System (in AMER and EMEA) to ensure deal preference and pricing advantages, helping partners manage, track and close on deals quickly,” he said.

Amazon kills off pay-per-click advertising programme

Posted on August 12, 2015 by - News

amazonAmazon has pulled the plug on a pay-per-click advertising programme that allowed businesses to divert traffic from the retailer’s platform to their own websites.

The programme allowed businesses that were not sellers on Amazon’s online marketplace to buy ad space on the website. Targeted ads for specific items would pop up on Amazon’s website and drive shoppers to the retailer or manufacturer’s own site.

Scot Wingo, the executive chairman of ChannelAdvisor told Reuters that customers liked it because it provided a middle ground of being able to partner with Amazon but also not allowing them to see all their transaction data.

Wingo said the programme was known for its high conversion rate and said advertisers were surprised when they received an email from Amazon notifying them of the change this week.

An Amazon spokeswoman confirmed the change and said the advertising programme will no longer be available after  October.

Amazon offers other advertising options for third-party sellers to differentiate their products like its sponsored ads program.

Angela Hsu, vice president of Internet business and marketing at Lamps Plus, a home decor company that used the product ads programme told Reuters she was disappointed.

The company was featured in an Amazon case study in May and said the programme increased its sales by more than 80 percent.

People are increasingly starting their product searches on e-commerce marketplaces such as Amazon before looking on an individual retailer’s website.

 

Orange disconnects with its Israeli mobile phone

Posted on June 30, 2015 by - News

 

OrangeA huge falling out between Orange and the Israeli mobile phone operator Partner Communications has resulted in the French telco withdrawing its licensing from the outfit.

Israel protested to France after Orange’s Chief Executive, Stephane Richard, said earlier this month he would terminate the licensing arrangement with Partner “tomorrow morning” if the contracts allowed.

The source of the spat was the economic activities in Israeli settlements of the occupied Palestinian territories which France and the European Union consider illegal.

Richard later apologised to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and said his comments, made during a visit to Egypt, had been misinterpreted to suggest that he supported an outright boycott of Israel for political reasons.

Orange said the comments as reflecting a broader desire and strategy of not licensing its brand where it was not directly in control of the business.

Partner pays a fee to use Orange’s brand in Israel.

Under the new deal, if Partner does not exercise its right to terminate their brand agreement within 12 months, either Partner or Orange could terminate it during the following 12 months, Orange said in a statement.

If it all goes south then Orange will set itself up in Israel. Orange deputy CEO, Pierre Louette, said in the statement that Israel was a strategically important country and the company had a long-term commitment to it.

It had paid Partner $44.7 million to go away and it is estimated that an additional $50 million could be paid out should the agreement be terminated within 24 months.

PC sales slip back into the doldrums

Posted on April 10, 2015 by - News

pc-sales-slumpPC sales plunged lower than a Hollywood starlet’s dress in the first quarter of this year, according to Gartner Group.

One big reason for the decline was businesses buying fewer desktop computers, according to the Gartner research firm. It noted companies have mostly finished replacing older PCs that used outdated Windows XP software.

PC sales may get a boost later this year when Microsoft releases its next version of Windows, analysts said, but they’re still expecting an overall decline in sales for this year.

Gartner added that there had been an sales of laptop computers and hybrid models that combine features of tablets and laptops. That could help drive a gradual return to growth by next year.

Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa estimates PC makers shipped 71.7 million computers in the first quarter, down 5.2 percent from a year earlier.

Some computer makers are doing better than others. China’s Lenovo saw an increase in worldwide sales, as did its nearest competitor, the maker of expensive printer ink HP.. However smaller companies, including Dell, saw sales decline.

Global PC sales have fallen steadily over the last three years, but Gartner are projecting a return to growth in 2016. Tablet users are giving up on the technology and are moving back to notebooks.

VMware expands channel programme

Posted on February 5, 2015 by - News

vmware-partner-link-bg-w-logoVMware has announced new programs and other initiatives for its partner network.

The announcement, made at this week’s VMware Partner Exchange 2015, is tied to the outfit’s cunning plan to push “business transformation in the mobile cloud era”.

The VMware Partner Professional Services Programme will let  consulting partners to sell and deliver their own services. Partners will have free access to experienced software-defined data centre architects and experts.   They will also get access to customer-focused labs along with training discounts, the company said.

The scheme is only available to a limited number of pilot partners in the first half of fiscal 2015, the program is expected to expand in the second half of the year.

VMware has been expanding its VMware vCloud Air Network Programme to include managed services opportunities for vCloud Air Network service providers.  This will enable partners to use VMware vCloud Air as their core infrastructure while providing differentiation through their managed services. This gives partners more flexibility in how to build and offer cloud solutions. The new managed services model will be available in the second quarter to qualified service providers.

Will Cisco’s partners back its global domination plans?

Posted on June 18, 2013 by - News

World-DominationLast week Cisco Worldwide Partner Summit in San Diego heard how the networking giant is planning to kill off its rivals in what it is calling a “brutal consolidation.”

The cunning plan is to eliminates the majority of the market incumbents in the next few years.

It was all blunt stuff. CEO John Chambers did not mince his words, and appeared to want to make mincemeat of anyone who dared to look at Cisco’s market share in a funny way.

“Far too often a competitor makes a statement and the market accepts it; but we have never lost a major battle in one of our core competencies,” he said. “Of our competitors from 15 to 20 years ago, none of them are here today. From 10 years only Juniper still exists, and we are going to get them.”

A few years ago Cisco was  worried about HP, Huawei and Avaya but we have left them behind as well, he added.

Chambers is right, but at the same time Cisco has had a fair few problems of its own. It has had to do a fairly brutal restructuring of its own. The pain of the last few years certainly is not over.

On top of that, Chambers has promised to remove three out of five of its rivals which is a fairly difficult task even for Captain Evil.

To the cheers of his minions, er partners, he said that there will be much consolidation and Cisco will end up on top.

Part of the success is because Cisco is providing most of the hardware for companies who have cloud and big data plans. The other is that it has been planning for something it calls the Internet of Everything for a while.

Chambers said that the internet of everything represents a $14.4tn  sales over the next decade. If he is right then VARs in particular will have to change their approach to what they sell.

Instead of switches, routers and servers, they will be called upon to flog connected products. At the moment they are not really in this headspace.

At least they can understand cloud products and that data has to be supported and accessible. In the short term Cisco partners will probably be looking at Hosted Collaboration Solution and so-called smart services, more geared to analytics and monitoring.

Cisco is going to want to see a push around and Cisco’s monitoring and support services.

At the conference Cisco talked a lot about the future of services for partners. It had to in many ways. Much of its bold vision requires its channel partners to change their cunning plans. But the issue is that some of Cisco’s partners do not want to move into services and just want to keep selling hardware.

Senior vice president of Cisco Services Edzard Overbeek tried to wave a carrot at them. He pointed out that Cisco wrote more than $200 million in rebates to partners who generated more than $6 billion.
Overbeek thought the future of Ciscos channel lay in consulting services; platform services; and industry services.

Industry services, encompassing services created for specific vertical markets such as retail, finance or manufacturing, will be the most important, he predicted.

Whether its channel partners will sign up for that vision is still unknown.