"We have been working on identifying new ways to help our customers and partners to navigate the challenges and forge a path forward"

Neeraj Bhatia, Director - Channel and Partner Alliances, Red Hat India and South Asia

“Our partners play a significant role in our go-to-market strategy and our overall success. Year over year, our partners have brought invaluable ability and resources for the benefit of our customers by being true ambassadors of Red Hat and our enterprise open source solutions, from automation to hybrid cloud infrastructure, Openshift based containerisation and beyond.

In response to the current events, we have been working on identifying new ways to help our customers and partners to navigate the challenges and forge a path forward. Our approach is to meet our customers wherever they are in their journey - whether it is adopting a virtual-first footing or scaling up to make remote workforce productive. Open source exists for times like these, working together to solve shared problems is fundamental to our business. These current challenges are unfamiliar and new to all of us. As we embrace new ways of working, we believe that open source and subscription based models will become more appealing for customers.

It has been established that organizations who have been adopting agile methodology, optimised infrastructure like automation, devops, mobility built on hybrid cloud, are better prepared to operate effectively during these unprecedented times. The requirements of social distancing and the need for restricted movement has further accelerated the adoption of automation by organizations across verticals to continue day-to-day operations. In line with this, below are some of the initiatives we have undertaken for our partners:

● We have launched Ansible Automation Platform Certified Partner program to help our partners build automation practice and capitalize on growing adoption of hybrid / multi cloud by customers. The program entails several benefits for partners including increased rebates.
● Our existing partner programs like Red Hat Partner Connect , Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider program, and Red Hat OpenShift Practice Builder Program are already designed to help partners meet customer needs for cloud based technologies, containerized application development and platforms.
● In order to create awareness around our SMB business, we initiated an exclusive program called Red Hat Baazigar (partner incentive program) for select partner representatives to drive new business opportunities for Red Hat.
● Red Hat Training & Certification is delivering live virtual training classes, extended timelines for using Red Hat Training Units and the exam window by three months for those who are not in position to cancel or reschedule previously scheduled classes or exams.”