Channel Program Changes: CenturyLink, Charter, HPE, Rackspace, More

When the biggest names in the channel make changes to their partner programs, you need to know about them. That’s why each month we put together a one-stop shop featuring a dozen that should be top of mind for the IT and telecom partner community.

September featured a new strategy outlined by new Rackspace channel chief Blake Wetzel; Charter opening up about its Time Warner Cable integration plans; improvements to HP and HPE partner programs; and much more.

Click through our gallery to see what you might’ve missed.

Missed August’s big channel changes? Find those here.

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In 2017, Charter Communications will begin consolidating all of its partners, as well as those of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, under one unified partner program.

This pas summer, Charter completed its $71 billion acquisition of TWC and Bright House, creating a cable powerhouse with almost as many subscribers as Comcast, the nation’s largest cableco.

Greg Iuzzolino, Charter’s vice president of channel sales, talked about what lies ahead for partners in an interview with Channel Partners.

Westcon Group’s Gahn Lane joined CenturyLink to build a federal partner program from the ground up and beef up the telco’s alliances with ISVs.

In a Q&A with Channel Partners, Lane said partners are telling him they want a consistent program that has “consistent rules of engagement between our direct teams, other channels and themselves.” In addition, they want a low barrier to entry with clear expectations as to what support and profit they can expect, he said.

Blake Wetzel has been Rackspace’s channel chief for only about four months and already the company’s channel strategy is undergoing a substantial makeover.

The new channel strategy will include five go-to-market pillars with five different segments of partners. The five pillars include: global and regional SIs; technology go-to-market partners, such as OEMs, software and cloud companies; agents; VARs and distributors; and ISVs.

Read more about what Wetzel said in this Channel Partners interview.

HP Inc. announced changes and enhancements to its Partner First program that include simplification to the way the company measures partners, a reduction in partner tier levels from four to three, an expanded solutions track, and new marketing resources.

In response to complaints about the complexity of how HP measures partners, the vendor reduced by 60 percent the number of variables, or metrics, in its compensation model.

Meantime, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced changes to its Partner Ready program that include the integration of competencies, a new and fully integrated Partner Ready Networking Program, a revamped Partner Ready Service Provider (PRSP) program, and an updated suite of partner marketing resources.

Read more about HP here and HPE here.

Networking provider Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) company, unveiled its new Partner Ready for Networking Program, a new Mobile First Platform and network procurement models.

The new partner program, which will launch Nov. 1, takes the “best elements” of Aruba’s PartnerEdge and HPE’s Partner Ready programs to create a new program that “enables partners to capitalize on the burgeoning enterprise mobility market opportunity,” according to Aruba. Donna Grothjan, Aruba’s vice president of worldwide channels, told Channel Partners that her company began planning to roll out a new partner program after HPE bought Aruba 15 months ago.

Read more about Aruba’s plans.

The cloud-focused vendor announced the Oracle Cloud Managed Service Provider Program (OCMSP) and said it is looking for Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) partners with Oracle Cloud expertise and the requisite skills to build, deploy, run and manage workloads on Oracle public cloud.

To date, there are a handful of early participants in the OCMSP who for the past few months have helped fine-tune it — Accenture, Altos, Cognizant, Deloitte, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Infosys, NTT/Dimension Data, TCS, Tech Mahindra, and Wipro, according to the company.

Read more about the new program.

Nectar Services has a new advanced partner designation program to prevent customers from migrating to the cloud without properly planning.

The Network Assessment Partner Program aims to helping enterprise customers identify partners that have been certified to use Nectar’s Perspective offering — design, deploy and report the results of network assessments for both cloud and on-premises UC deployments, including Microsoft Skype for Business Online.

Read more about Nectar’s partner program.

Docker expanded its partner program to address growing enterprise demand for container-as-a-service (CaaS) offerings through its Docker Datacenter commercial platform.

The program establishes a two-tier partner structure (Premier and Professional) to meet the demands of North America and EMEA, and creates a path for building a “Docker Practice.” Docker Datacenter delivers an integrated platform for developers and IT operations to collaborate in the enterprise software supply chain.

Read the full story about Docker.

IndependenceIT rolled out a new App Services delivery platform and a new channel program for ISVs and MSPs to facilitate deployment of application services.

App Services is designed for service providers to set up and manage application collections that can be delivered directly to any end-user device or published to an existing Cloud Workspace environment. It offers IT administrators an application publishing model with driven workflow to define a new service, creation of software-defined data center (SDDC) server infrastructure, application installation and management, and the publishing of applications to users or groups of users from a range of end-user organizations.

Find out more about the new platform.

Domo, the business-optimization platform provider, introduced its Channel Partner Program for Agencies aimed at helping agencies of all sizes to use data transparency and real-time optimization to deliver more value.

With Domo, agencies can capture relevant data from multiple data systems, such as web analytics, search-engine marketing data and social media, and share it with clients at the time decisions around spend and allocation of resources need to be made, the company said. It kicked off the program with 50 agency partners on board.

Read more about the program.

Zerto, the disaster recovery and business continuity provider, changed its channel program to help match its partners’ growth.

The company, which started using the channel in earnest back in 2012 and reports year-over-year growth in its partner network and partner certifications, announced that it will unify the Zerto Alliance Partner program for VARs, systems integrators and cloud service providers.

Read more about Zerto’s plans for its partner program.

Cryptzone announced an enhanced channel program that offers plan-ahead marketing development funds, where the company will invest in select pre-sales activities, as well as attractive margins, discounts and comprehensive sales and implementation support.

The company’s AppGate products are available as apps on Amazon’s AWS Marketplace; HPE unveiled an AppGate integration with its Helion OpenStack cloud platform at HPE Protect 2016. AppGate supports both AWS and Azure now, and a spot in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace is pending.

Read more about Cryptzone’s program.