Red Hat continues to build global channel for open source

Red Hat has predicted further reliance on the global channel at its North American Partner Conference, as partners continue to make up the lion’s share of the company’s business.

D. Robert Martin, Red Hat vice president of North America partner sales, said the open source software firm’s partner bookings made up about 54 percent of Red Hat’s overall bookings in 2009. But that percentage grew to 68 percent in 2014.

He said: “While those numbers provide some historical perspective of how our channel relationships have added fuel to Red Hat’s fire, we believe that the future looks even brighter.

“Over the next couple of years, we anticipate that our channel organisation will continue to be the engine for Red Hat’s new customer acquisitions. We plan to drive scale and efficiency while improving and optimising our partner mix and enabling those partners to establish open source practices.”

He added: “We understand that without those partners, there would be no room for growth or future opportunities. Without those partners and the close relationships we have with them, there would be no Red Hat as we know it today.”

Martin said partners were always selected based on synergies, and that Red Hat always goes for “quality over quantity”. “It’s not about having the largest list of channel partners. It’s about selecting the partners that offer complementary services to the products we have to offer, and making sure that those partners are the very best at delivering solutions to the market.”

Red Hat is also “business plan driven” when it comes to building the channel. “We work closely with each of our partners to outline attainable goals and create a roadmap to achieve our objectives,” Martin said.