JFrog’s New Partner Program Flattens the Pyramid

If you look across the industry at the many partner programs offered by vendors, it’s hard not to notice a large number of them are based on tiers. They have multiple levels named after different metals – bronze, silver, gold, platinum, titanium, whatever.

Kelly Hartman, senior vice president of global channels and alliances wanted to get away from that approach when she joined JFrog a little over a year ago. Hartman is a channel veteran, bringing years of experience from Cisco, IBM, and AWS to her new role at JFrog.

Flattening the Pyramid

“What I built was not the traditional model that started 20-plus years ago where everybody builds a pyramid and the partners have to climb their way to the top,” Hartman told ChannelE2E. “I flattened it. I said, look, let’s just make it easy to engage. Let’s work from what the customers need and build programs that actually make sense in terms of how to engage us with customers.”

JFrog is the purveyor of the JFrog Software Supply Chain Platform which the company describes as a single system of record that powers organizations to build, manage, and distribute software quickly and securely, ensuring it is available, traceable, and tamper-proof.

JFrog Partner Program Built Around Co-Selling

Hartman told ChannelE2E that the new partner model is centered around a co-sell motion. She says that this program gets JFrog’s sales and solution engineering teams aligned with partners on customer opportunities. Co-sell functions as on-the-job training. Partners can begin working on opportunities immediately without the need for upfront training and meeting other requirements.

Did Hartman base this new partner program on experience she had in her past roles at Cisco, AWS and IBM?

“It was based on the realization that we’re in a world where software drives everything,” Hartman said. When partners need to climb a partner pyramid for every single company they work with, it adds up to a lot. Hartman said that for many partners, a lot of up front investment is required to climb that pyramid before the partners see any kind of payoff.

JFrog's Evolved Partner Program Model

“In the old days, a channel partner would go very deep with one company – like a Cisco. They would build their whole business around one company. That’s not where we are now. We’re not in that same world.”

JFrog announced its new partner program in association with its inaugural Partner Day. The company said the new global channel partner program will ease customer adoption of JFrog solutions through third parties and aims to create new revenue streams for JFrog and its partners.

In a statement announcing the partner program and Partner Day, JFrog Chief Revenue Officer Tali Notman said, “JFrog expands rapidly within the enterprise, offering both on-premises and cloud solutions. Our foundation was established through strong community support, and we’ve become pioneers in the devOps and security realms. As we prepare for the future, I am enthusiastic to witness how our scale will further flourish through collaboration with our trusted partners.”

Details: The JFrog Partner Program

Hartman noted that the new partner program approach is designed to allow partners to tap into JFrog’s solutions and expertise. Certified partners can choose to co-sell, resell or sell into U.S. government agencies with dedicated programs to support each motion pre-and-post sales. JFrog said the program also provides the following:

Hartman said the new program assigns a partner manager to each partner from the start. Partners don’t have to reach a certain level before they get this kind of help.

JFrog currently has 272 partners around the world, searchable here.