Red Hat Transforms Global Partner Experience for Simplicity and Flexibility

Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the transformation of its global partner experience to offer greater simplicity, choice and flexibility to partners collaborating with Red Hat. As part of this transformation, Red Hat is modernizing its partner engagement model by launching a new program framework, introducing upgraded tools to enable streamlined cross-collaboration and providing easier access to critical technology, training and resources. 

IDC predicts that 70% of vendors will pursue a customer-led ecosystem orchestration strategy by 2025, indicating that technology vendors must be more firmly aligned with partners to deliver the coordinated solutions, services and deployment flexibility that customers are looking for in today’s shifting IT landscape. To address these changing customer demands, Red Hat is implementing a simplified approach to its partner engagement model to provide greater transparency across the ecosystem and apply a partner program framework that is purposely designed with the end customer in mind. 

By utilizing a modular program design, partners will have greater choice and flexibility in how they choose to work with Red Hat to align more closely with their own business strategies and customer needs. These new enhancements to the Red Hat partner engagement model will help improve the partner experience and encourage ecosystem co-creation that will deepen partner capabilities to better support customers.

Introducing the Red Hat Partner Practice Accelerator Program

As part of the partner engagement model transformation, Red Hat is introducing the Red Hat Partner Practice Accelerator Program, which focuses on identifying, enabling, validating and incentivizing partners within the commercial segment, including mid-market and SMB (small medium business) customers. With this program, Red Hat is empowering partners to lead the full commercial customer lifecycle while providing differentiated and impactful business outcomes using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and Red Hat OpenShift. The Red Hat Partner Practice Accelerator Program comprises a select group of partners that have demonstrated advanced technical knowledge and proven business practices by achieving Red Hat professional services credentials and certifications related to automation and application development, positioning them as trusted experts who are able to architect, implement and configure tailored solutions for commercial customers. 

As experts in automation and application modernization, certified services partners in the Red Hat Partner Practice Accelerator Program can help envision, shape and execute digital transformation roadmaps for customers, no matter how complex. To do this, these select partners will have extensive access to resources and professional services opportunities to enhance their profitability, differentiate themselves in the market and generate customer success using Red Hat technologies. 

Partners that have completed professional services certification and are currently participating in the Red Hat Partner Practice Accelerator Program include: Li9 Technology Solutions,, Linux Plus, Sekom and Stone Door Group. 

Bolstering partner enablement and training resources

To support its updated engagement model, Red Hat is investing in making resources, expertise and open source solutions more accessible to partners to help them operate more seamlessly with customers. In addition to continuous improvements to partner certification and credential pathways on the Red Hat Partner Training Portal, and expanded visibility for co-created solutions in the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog, Red Hat is offering partners a platform for on-demand product demonstrations, including step-by-step instructions and talking points for customers.

Red Hat Demo Platform, which will be made available through Red Hat Partner Connect, will provide product demos that span the entire Red Hat portfolio for partners to showcase open source innovations with customers in a low-risk environment. The platform includes multi-product demos and fully scripted workshops that can be used to deliver one- or two-day experiences for customers. Red Hat Demo Platform will also grant participating partners early access to demos of new product releases ahead of general availability. 

Red Hat Partner Connect offers a single destination for new and current Red Hat partners to access these new enhancements and all of Red Hat’s tools and resources to drive greater customer value and partner profitability. Red Hat Partner Connect makes it simple for partners to register and log into the partner portal to gain immediate access to the tools they need to build their business with Red Hat.

Availability 

Red Hat plans to launch its updated partner engagement model and programming in the second half of 2024. Red Hat Partner Practice Accelerator Program is an invite-only program now open to eligible partners globally. Red Hat Demo Platform is scheduled to be available in May 2024.