At its partner conference in San Diego on Tuesday, Red Hat announces a number of new and expanded offerings for its channel partners who are growing increasingly important to the Linux firm’s growing revenue stream.
“This is not the strategy du jour,” said Roger Egan, vice president of North America Channel Sales and Development for Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), which is based in Raleigh,
“Working with and growing out our channel is imperative to Red Hat’s ability to deliver reliable, enterprise-ready, open source solutions to customers,” he added. “We are committed to our partners and working with them to provide the technology necessary to meet the IT demands of today and tomorrow.”
Red Hat’s partners provided 65 percent of its global bookings revenue in the last quarter. That percentage has increased from 53 percent in 2008 to 60 percent in fiscal year 2012.
In this fiscal year, Red Hat is targeting $1.13 billion in revenue.
New channel offerings include a Red Hat Partner Demo System, which includes a virtual demo lad for training, customer demonstrations or proof of concepts.
Red Hat also is expanding its qualified sales leads program, which directs those to channel partners.
The company also said it was adding more “trained technical resources” to assist partners, include channel solution architects and partner sales representatives.
[RED HAT ARCHIVE: Check out a decade of Red Hat stories as reported in WRAL Tech Wire.]
