Veeam has created a framework to enable technology partners to move up the ranks of its ecosystem with the recent launch of the company’s Alliance Partner Program.

Veeam quietly rolled out the Alliance Partner Program earlier this month to help its growing stable of technology partners to understand their role within the partner network. Newly appointed Vice President of Global Strategic Alliances Andy Vandeveld is spearheading the program, which unites Veeam’s Global Strategic Alliance partners and its TAP partners under a single banner.

“What I wanted to do when I came in was to kind of make sense of both of these programs and bring them together, so that we have one cohesive program, one framework that we can use for our alliance partnerships going forward for years and years to come,” he said.

Vandeveld said the new program places a much greater emphasis on transparency, so partners know where they stand in the Veeam hierarchy as well as what they need to do to gain additional benefits and perks from the company.

“Part of putting together this new alliance program was to create levels of partnership so that people understand where they are in our ecosystem, how they can move up levels in the partner ecosystem if they so choose, what the benefits of moving up [are] and then the requirements are for moving up,” he said.

The program is made up of three basic tiers – unmanaged or self-managed Access Partners occupy the bottom tier, while Elite Partners who have demonstrated a willingness to invest in joint marketing with Veeam occupy the middle tier. Global Strategic Alliance partners such as EMC, HP, Cisco, NetApp, VMware and Microsoft occupy the highest tier.

Vandeveld said Veeam utilized the best elements of many different contemporary partner programs to create its own offering. So far, the company has about 20 technology partners, and plans to continue adding more over the next several years, including new top tier Global Technology Partners.

“This is the beginning of an alliance program framework that we want to use for years and years to come,” said Vandeveld. “This is about enabling our alliance partners and our reseller partners to be able to have conversations with customers with confidence that there is some level of relationship between Veeam and whatever storage vendor the customer desires.”