Silver Peak revamps partner programme

Silver Peak is introducing sweeping changes to its channel programme to become “clearer and more predictable” in how it engages with its partners.

The WAN vendor said that following a thorough review, it is making its Partner Edge programme more predictable, and incentives easier to obtain for partners.

“The new programme enhancements were primarily based on partner feedback, which we take very seriously. Previous feedback indicated we needed to be clearer and more predictable about how partners’ investments were returned,” Mike Kontowtt, Silver Peak’s EMEA director of channel, told Microscope.

In response, he said, the new programme “has aligned the tiers and applied new incentives along with enablement tools that addressed these gaps.”

Silver Peak is introducing a new foundational partner tier that it says will provide all partners with a clearer understanding of what is required at the Silver, Gold and Platinum tiers, including up-front revenue and training objectives.

“We are evolving the tiers of our programme, primarily focusing more attention toward training and certification – this is an effort to make our programme more predictable and easier to understand. Tiering is based both on accreditation and revenue targets, but what this programme is trying to do is add in extra benefits, such as financial incentives, as the partners invest in training and resources,” said Kontowtt.

In a statement Silver Peak said it was building a programme that would equip partners to capitalise on what IDC predicts will be an $8bn SD-WAN market by 2021.

“We wanted to put together a framework that we can build on in the future as we rollout incremental incentives, programmes and enablement offers to enable our partners to build successful and profitable SD-WAN business practices,” said Kontowtt.

The company has also unveiled a new partner accelerator programme, available to Gold and Platinum partners, which creates a set of Silver Peak incentives to reward partners that focus on growth initiatives in selling the Unity EdgeConnect SD-WAN edge platform.

The programme spans several reward levels and includes partner level, sales and technical team rewards. Silver Peak said it is introducing two new incentives that will be available to Gold and Platinum tier partners immediately.

The new customer incentive offers an incremental margin of up to 10 percent paid to the partner at the close of a new EdgeConnect SD-WAN edge platform opportunity. This includes both the first order and all follow-on business from that customer for 12-months following the initial sale.

With the fast start incentive, an additional two percent incentive will be paid against all new EdgeConnect customer sales. This is accretive to the 10 percent new customer capture incentive and provides partners with the opportunity to earn up to a 12 percent margin incentive for new customer deployments.

The vendor stated that it is also promoting a new programmatic approach for Gold and Platinum partners, which will enable Silver Peak inside and field sales teams to pass active leads directly to partners.