Red Hat Revises Partner Program to Showcase Tech Expertise and Add Marketing Tools

Red Hat is bolstering a year-old partner initiative to help its partners more clearly communicate their technical expertise to customers so they can expand their businesses and revenue.

The newly launched Red Hat Specialized Partner Program grew out of the former Red Hat Partner Practice Accelerator, which was created as a pilot project in early 2024 to assist partners in developing and showcasing their skills in high-demand areas where customers need technical assistance and guidance.

The company also unveiled its new Red Hat Partner Demand Center and its accompanying Red Hat Campaigns and Demand Generation platform, which can autonomously launch ready-made marketing campaigns to help partners reach new customers. The new demand center tools can also be used to create workshop and webinar registration pages that promote Red Hat offerings to customers and prospects.

“It is really about empowering partners with more control of their business with Red Hat and greater clarity and tools to accelerate their performance,” Stefanie Chiras, senior vice president of partner ecosystem success at Red Hat, told ChannelE2E. “These improvements were added based on direct requests and input from partners. I cannot emphasize enough how much we value the feedback from partners as it directly guides the improvements we make and directly influences our partner program.”

To qualify, partners need a services practice validated and certified by Red Hat. Most of the participating partners are regional systems integrators who also resell Red Hat products and services, but other partners, including MSPs, can participate as long as they meet the requirements.

For MSPs that provide Red Hat validated and certified services, the new Red Hat Specialized Partner Program gives them a way to get recognized for their expertise in areas like automation, container management, and virtualization, said Chiras. “Plus, the new Partner Demand Center is a fantastic resource. MSPs can find ready-to-use marketing campaigns and content that they can customize to educate their customers, generate leads, and co-brand their own offerings. It is about helping them position themselves as trusted advisors while delivering the best of Red Hat technology. In short, we are making it as easy as possible for them to differentiate themselves with their customers.”

All Red Hat partners, regardless of size or qualifications, will be able to access the Partner Demand Center for marketing assistance.

Red Hat has also added an incremental rebate for the resale of OpenShift in the second half of the year, which complements a similar rebate on Red Hat’s Ansible Automation Platform, she said.

“For MSPs, these changes are a big deal,” said Chiras. “Whether they are reselling Red Hat subscriptions or managing environments that use Red Hat technology, there are new opportunities.”

Looking Under the Hood of the New Red Hat Partner Demand Center

To help partners boost their marketing campaigns to customers and prospective customers, the new Red Hat Partner Demand Center and the Red Hat Campaigns and Demand Generation platform deliver new tools that can help them generate more business opportunities, according to the company.

Included are AI tools that can deliver autonomous marketing campaigns through an intuitive, self-serve platform, as well as new tools that make it easier for partners to add customizable content that reflects their branding, logos, and messaging to attract customers to their services.

Also included is comprehensive activity and lead tracking, and a broad content library, which currently features more than 16 sample marketing campaigns in nine core languages that span all major Red Hat products. This platform can support partners’ marketing efforts, providing joint branding and messaging.

Red Hat’s Partner Marketing Moves Make Sense: Analysts

Shelly Kramer, principal analyst with Kramer & Co., told ChannelE2E that she sees this kind of help from vendors becoming more prevalent across the channel as they work to help partners maximize their technical and marketing chops.

“Partners struggling with marketing messaging and sales enablement asset development is not a new phenomenon,” said Kramer. “It makes perfect sense – MSPs and channel partners drive sales for vendors. The more tools and support they have to do that, the more successful they can be and the more revenue they can generate for their own companies and for their vendor partners. Improving the partner experience is a theme we are seeing across the industry and with good reason. It is the smart thing to do.”

Another analyst, Jack E. Gold, president and principal analyst with J.Gold Associates LLC, agrees.

“Red Hat sees its future as one driven more and more by the partners and it is doing all it can to make it easy for partners to work with them,” said Gold. “This is the primary vehicle for them to get to the mid-market and SMBs. So, anything they can do to make it more attractive for partners is a win for them and for the partners. While IBM focuses on the high-end enterprise for Red Hat, mid-market growth is important and they want to make sure they can leverage all the activity in cloud and SaaS that the mid-market is embracing.”