Just last month at the firm’s annual conference, Red Hat stressed the importance of its partner ecosystem…
Red Hat is putting its money where its mouth is by continuing its mission to change up its partner program and ecosystem support for the better.
Some key tweaks have already been made and there’s more to come, according to Penny Philpot, vice president of the firm’s EMEA Partner Ecosystem.
Philpot, a multi-decade channel veteran, has made a meaningful impact on how Red Hat engages with partners since her appointment a year ago.
“One of the things we did was to put all of the channel partner-facing people in my organization. If you’re just an individual reporting to somebody who’s not necessarily a channel person that can get confusing in terms of what the message is. So, from the partner’s perspective [it’s about] having a very strong relationship, one that’s consistent, and it’s really focused on new opportunities and growth,” she said.
Philpot continued: “We’re very much looking at our partners to help us to find that net new business and not just working with us, leading from the front. We’ve also changed a lot of the models, especially in companies that are not necessarily ‘enterprise.’
“We all talk about customer-first, but partner-always. [In the past year] the DNA of working with partners has drastically improved. We’ve done a lot of things to move people to understand how partners can help grow, upsell, and cross-sell. And, in many cases, they are way more advanced in knowing the landscape for customers because they’re talking to them already. And we’ve got a fantastic solution.”
Before joining Red Hat, Philpot spent 25 years at Oracle and held key positions at Cisco and Microsoft. This experience, she said, brought a very valid and timely external perspective to things and was a key reason for her hiring.
“We’re getting very good at changing the conversation to be much more about customer value and customer solutions.
