Red Hat Launches Partner Program

Red Hat, a provider of open source solutions, announced the launch of its enhanced Partner Program, redesigned to give the company's business partners additional economic, sales, marketing and technical benefits through the introduction of a new partner level and solution specializations.

The Red Hat Partner Program, the company noted, will now include a Premier Business Partner level in addition to Advanced and Ready classifications. The program will also feature Infrastructure, Middleware & Virtualization specializations.

"The reseller business around Red Hat is growing because customers are demanding trusted open source solutions to carve costs out of their datacenters, which is why we've enhanced our Partner Program to provide a level of partner engagement," said Roger Egan, VP of North American Channel Sales. "Additionally we've increased benefits and built in specializations which will help our partners grow their open source practice. All of this reinforces our commitment and investment to our channel ecosystem."

Red Hat said the redesigned program is intended to enable its partner community to collaborate to create complete solutions that solve customers' IT challenges. The redesigned program aims to serve all levels of partners and enable them to gain expertise within specific areas of the Red Hat product portfolio.

In order to increase the reach of partners' solution expertise, Red Hat said its Partner Program will now also include three product specializations with the aim to help partners sell total solution sets to their customers. The three specializations are as follows:

- Infrastructure Specialization: This specialization is intended for partners with expertise on Red Hat Infrastructure Solutions; including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform, Red Hat Network Satellite, Red Hat Global File System, Red Hat Cluster Suite and Red Hat MRG. This specialization requires partners to maintain at least two Channel Sales Certified employees and one Red Hat Certified Technician.

- Middleware Specialization: This specialization is intended for partners with middleware solution expertise on JBoss Enterprise Middleware solutions; including JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, JBoss BRMS, JBoss Operations Network, JBoss Developer Studio, JBoss SOA Platform and JBoss Data Services Platform. Partners with this specialization will have at least two Channel Middleware Sales Certified employees and one JBoss Administrator.

- Virtualization Specialization: This specialization is for partners who have demonstrated expertise in Red Hat's virtualization offerings at both the sales and technical level. This specialization requires partners to maintain two Channel Sales Certified employees and one Red Hat Certified Engineer with a focus on virtualization training.

Red Hat's Partner Program Information:

http://www.redhat.com/partners

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