**Editor’s Note: Click here for a list of March’s important channel-program changes you should know.**

Gigamon is adding a professional services program in hopes of increasing profit and opportunities for its systems integrators.

The company, which sells a network-visibility platform entirely through the channel, is touting the new program as an additional opportunity for some of its partners.

“This program is specifically designed as an additional program or an additional level that our partners can reach to be authorized by Gigamon to deliver professional services on our behalf,” said Barbara Spicek, vice president of channel sales. Spicek said her company works with two U.S. distributors and about 250 systems integrators (SIs).

Spicek there were three main advantages to adding professional services for Gigamon’s SIs. Adapting the “trusted advisor” moniker and increasing their technology skill set can increase customer proximity, she said. And then there’s profit, which is changing in the partner landscape.

“Partners are looking for incremental revenues. The actual revenues of pure product sales aren’t as attractive anymore,” she said. “Most of the partner landscape has tried to find a model more balanced around hardware, software and service offerings, and we are addressing specifically that need with our partners, because the moment you have professional services, you can increase the revenues by adding professional services revenues to your overall offering.”

Gigamon calls the new addition a “vendor-assisted” model in which the company helps train partners to “design, implement, and service Gigamon solutions.”{ad}

All of this is part of a broader channel strategy that Spicek says focuses on selectively recruiting channel partners and ensuring that those who are loyal get a good “return-on-partnership.”

“At Gigamon, our program is extremely loyalty-driven, and for those partners that invest and our loyal to us, we try to provide a very attractive business model,” she said.

Spicek took over Gigamon’s channel program in January. She led Brocade’s global channel sales from 2009 to 2012.