Channel Post speaks with Elie Dib, Senior Managing Director, Middle East, Turkey and North Africa at Riverbed on building stronger partner relationships to create a mutually beneficial business.
Please tell us about the key aspects of you partner program. What enhancements have you introduced to your partner program this year?
Riverbed is a channel driven company and especially in the Middle East we drive most of our business through our partners. Partners play a vital role in guiding Riverbed’s channel and market strategy. The Riverbed Performance Partner Program (RPPP) includes Riverbed’s partners such as service providers, systems integrators, resellers and distributors. The key aspects of our partner program include monetary incentives, partner enablement, training and certification. This program has been designed with the objective to enable each channel partner to efficiently engage with Riverbed and provide better value to customers. The program also encourages channel partners to invest and train their employees on Riverbed products, solutions and services by providing them with added incentives.
We have made some significant enhancements to our Partner Program that will allow our partners to gain better to incentives. These include engaging with partners to develop a joint go-to-market strategy to better support customers. We will also enable our partners to develop their services portfolio which will not only help in generating new revenue streams but also drive mutual growth opportunities. This is achieved through our service delivery platform that is meant for service providers and partners, and enables them to enhance their network-as-a-service strategy.
How do you help partners improve business and margins?
The enhancements in our Partner Program are meant to enable our partners with better incentives and build on the existing program benefits like joint engagement, embedded solution and services, and selling across the Riverbed solution portfolio. Working on a mutually profitable relationship with partners, we support them in lead generation through several marketing activities. In some cases we work directly with the customer but make sure that we engage our partner as well in such a scenario. In this way we can continue to contribute to the revenue as well as margins of our partners.
Do you have any plans to expand your partner community?
We currently work with a group of focussed partners that have a wide portfolio of products and are capable of adapting SD-WAN to be part of their existing portfolio. We have a strong partner ecosystem and cherish having new partners, so as long as the association is mutually beneficial, we will continue building our partner strength.
To this end, we want to have a set of focused partners who will invest in developing the highest level of sales and technical proficiency on our portfolio. Over the last few years, Riverbed’s focus has been on developing its distribution network as well. Having successfully accomplished this by deepening ties with existing distributors and signing on a new specialty distributor, the company will now turn its attention to partners. Our aim is for these partners to incorporate Riverbed’s market leading technologies into their integrated frameworks to create comprehensive solutions for customers.
How will your emergence into the SD-WAN market this year open up new opportunities for partners? As you enter a new market, what kind of support will you be providing to your partners?
Since partners are always on the lookout for new avenues of growth, this is an amazing opportunity not just for Riverbed but also for its ecosystem of technology partners, channel partners, system integrators and service providers. With our entry into the SD-WAN market, our partners can now offer their customers a broader portfolio of application performance infrastructure products to solve a broad range of customer problems, particularly in the area of SD-WAN solutions for remote and branch office locations.
We take our partners to the next level by providing them with more than the traditional support through training courses that we conduct through our partner Academy. We also engage our partners for proof-of-concept and implementation, and make sure that they develop their technology and technical skills to best serve our customers.
What should prospective partners expect from you?
Riverbed is a channel-led company and has always enabled its partners by building an embedded solution and services program, driving joint engagement and accelerating repeatable revenue. Our current and prospective partners can expect us to continue building on this legacy and go beyond these goals to further demonstrate our capabilities to drive significant impact with key partners.
