Red Hat, has today announced the global availability of Red Hat OPEN, a new online partner enablement network. Red Hat OPEN is a training and accreditation platform designed to empower partners and supply them with the reliable guidance and technical information they need to assist customers in making sound technology decisions.
Rachel Cassidy, vice president, Global Partner Enablement, Red Hat, said, “Red Hat OPEN combines tools, content and best practices to arm our partners with the role-based expertise they need to sell and deliver Red Hat solutions. The program was built in collaboration with our partners in an effort to build a truly effective program to help them be successful in building service practices to enhance their solution offerings available to their current and target customer base.”
As Red Hat’s global network of partners expands, the company’s partner enablement initiatives are designed to make accreditations available to partners 24 x 7 without partners having to leave their homes or offices. This puts training in the control of our partners and can greatly reduce time and expense enhancing partner satisfaction. To enable partners in these areas, Red Hat OPEN includes several features that aim to enhance partner skills, provide expanded accreditation options, and offer a one-stop repository for technical assets.
Matt St. Onge, principal architect, AdvizeX Technologies, explained, “As businesses continue to face complex IT challenges, Red Hat OPEN helps us have real-time 24/7 access to the Red Hat resources and information we need to assist our customers. The new partner demo system and rich technical library also gives us the tools we need to successfully serve as knowledgeable advisors to our clients.”
As part of Red Hat OPEN, the Red Hat Partner Center will provide partners with 24/7 access to technical information as well as training resources, enabling partners to enhance their skills anytime, anywhere. Red Hat OPEN includes role-specific, self-paced training accreditations for sales, sales engineers, and delivery engineers; the Red Hat Partner Demo System, featuring pre-configured demos for Red Hat’s portfolio of open hybrid cloud solutions and e-learning courses; and an online Red Hat Partner Technical Library that offers tagged, searchable, and dynamic content.
Matt Dugan, lead middleware solutions architect, Shadow-Soft, said, “At Shadow-Soft, we leverage Red Hat OPEN heavily as our go-to source for technical documentation, presentation resources and information we can represent to clients investing in Red Hat products and Shadow-Soft professional services. Through OPEN, we are able to steer our customers into alignment with the Red Hat product roadmaps and demonstrate the competitive advantages we achieve together when investing in Red Hat solutions. Additionally, OPEN is an invaluable training tool for our team that provides the latest and greatest Red Hat product training, enabling us to enhance our sales and technical skills anytime, anywhere.”
Red Hat OPEN includes training courses that are designed to focus on developing role-based expertise and skills required to sell and deliver Red Hat offerings. Red Hat partners can earn accreditations by taking a prescribed combination of OPEN training courses. Red Hat OPEN features dozens of courses for partners, aligned to three specialized tracks:
ñ Red Hat Sales Specialist Partner Accreditation includes value pitch, sales qualification, competitive positioning, objection handling, and pricing;
ñ Red Hat Sales Engineer Accreditation includes technical sales, technical qualification, competitive positioning, objection handling, pricing, how-to demo, and product knowledge; and
ñ Red Hat Delivery Partner Accreditation includes product installation, application development, proof-of-concept delivery, and solution architecture.
Red Hat OPEN’s new Red Hat Partner Demo System offers partners a venue to observe online product demonstrations and practice how to perform demos. These demo sessions are created by Red Hat technical and sales experts, and partners can use the demos as stand-alone learning exercises or in conjunction with OPEN training courses. While currently only available in North America, Red Hat plans to roll it out globally soon.
Red Hat OPEN also offers a robust online technical library. Managed by Red Hat Solution Architects, the Partner Technical Library gives partners access to the same content as Red Hat sales engineering experts, from product basics to advanced technologies and solutions. The technical library features an extensive database of resources, available for pre-sales, post-sales, and delivery teams. Items include roadmaps, presentations and collateral, use cases, reference architectures, performance benchmarks, videos, whitepapers and sales guides.
