Monday Morning Impact – April 18

Citrix Introduces New Partner Growth Incentives

Citrix has rolled out adjustments to its partner program, including a new upfront discount for partner-identified sales opportunities and the expansion of its marketing development funds.

As part of an effort to drive mid-market demand generation, Citrix is introducing a new Strategic Development Fund for Citrix Solution Advisors (CSAs) and distributors. To be introduced in July 2016 in the Americas and EMEA, it will replace existing marketing fund programs and provide partners with funds to drive down the cost of planned and documented marketing activities which target the highest ROI opportunities in the mid-market. A rollout is intended to follow in the Asia Pacific and Japan region later this year.

In May, Citrix intends to launch its Net New Partner Sourced program to enable CSA, SI and ISV partners to be rewarded for identifying and qualifying new opportunities, especially in the mid-market. Under the program, partners will be eligible for a seven percent suggested upfront discount on all new partner qualified opportunities. This new incentive is additive to existing up front suggested discounts, thereby enabling a potential overall incentive payout of up to ten percent.

“We are committed to increasing the value of our partner programs and resources,” said Kimberly Martin, vice president of worldwide partner sales and strategy at Citrix. “The changes we’re announcing represent a second wave of improvements in 2016 and are designed to promote growth, drive profit and give our partners greater predictability, especially for those partners that invest in their relationship with us and look to target the mid-market.”

The company is also in the midst of an effort to streamline and simplify its program, based on partner feedback.

Channel Impact
Incentive plans are one segment of channel programs that need to be periodically revisited and updated in order to reflect changing market conditions and shifts in strategic initiatives. Every vendor’s incentive plan needs to be properly aligned towards its particular vision and goals.

Dimension Data Acquires Ceryx; Expanding Cloud Services

Dimension Data has announced the acquisition of privately-held Ceryx, a Toronto-based company that offers unified messaging and collaboration solutions with a particular focus on North American mid-market and enterprise clients using Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, Skype for Business and Office 365.

Dimension Data will combine Ceryx’s offerings with its Microsoft Services to deliver an enhanced services portfolio that spans on-premise, private cloud and public cloud.

“We’ve seen strong adoption of our private cloud offering for Exchange, Sharepoint and Skype for Business,” said Dimension Data CTO Ettienne Reinecke. This strategic acquisition fast tracks Dimension Data’s hybrid offering, and positions the combined entities as one of the few companies globally that can offer the full suite of different delivery models that allows organizations to provision, manage and optimize these workloads through a single management portal, irrespective of platform or location.”

Ceryx will reside within Dimension Data’s ITaaS Service Unit. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Channel Impact
This acquisition shows a strong potential for synergies that are critical for accelerated time to market and effective facilitation of client cloud transitions.

Riverbed Adds New Incentives to Partner Program

Riverbed Technology, a San Francisco-based application performance company, is adding rebates and other incentives over the coming year to help stimulate partner development of service programs, as well as to encourage joint engagement, and to accelerate repeatable revenue in the smaller enterprise and mid-markets.

In addition, Riverbed will add a new track to its partner program for Managed Services and make focused investments and refinements to its Value-Added Distributor program. And to meet the evolving buying needs of customers, Riverbed will launch pilot programs for Managed Services sold via the channel with subscription licensing and pricing. Riverbed is also in the process of launching an Authorized Consulting Partner track to enable key partners to better support customers by delivering Riverbed franchise professional services.

“Technology including mobile, SaaS and cloud are disrupting business models and providing new ways to engage and connect with customers as well as entirely new routes to market,” said Karl Meulema, senior vice president Global Channels at Riverbed. “The updates to our partner program are designed to help our partners make this market shift. Riverbed’s disruptive SD-WAN, visibility and software-defined edge platforms, along with our continued leadership in WAN optimization, make us the ideal go-to-market partner in this dynamic market.”

Channel Impact
The new adjustments are designed to reflect the changing dynamics of the IT sales motion, including new ways in which the vendor’s offerings can be brought to market.