NetApp Announces New Partner Programme

NetApp has announced its intent to launch a new partner programme in NetApp fiscal year 2024 (FY’24). NetApp Partner Sphere is the evolution of NetApp's industry-leading Unified Partner Program.

Partners who can drive digital and cloud transformation are primed to capture market share, but this requires modern business models with highly specialized services and capabilities that support the entire customer journey. The new cloud-focused and services-led NetApp Partner Sphere delivers a flexible path to advancement and growth for all partner sales motions. By consolidating and simplifying multiple programmes into one that includes all partner types, business models and routes to market, this programme enables partners to evolve their business in the cloud.

The programme offers robust training and support to help partners capture cloud market share, brings new validation, recognition and rewards for partners’ investments in competencies and services, and the accelerated growth structure allows partners to contribute transformational value to joint customers.

“NetApp is committed to driving a partner-first culture, and the strategy behind our new partner program brings that commitment to life,” said Jenni Flinders, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Partner Organisation at NetApp. “With NetApp Partner Sphere, we’re accelerating growth and customer success across our partner ecosystem by extending their reach into the cloud and offering more business opportunities with our industry-leading portfolio and flexible consumption models.”

“We are in a data-driven, digital world where enterprises face constant challenges harnessing the cloud,” said Sanjay Rohatgi, Senior Vice President and General Manager, NetApp Asia Pacific. “A strong and energized partner ecosystem well-versed in the cloud will play a key role in leading them down a path of true business impact. By appropriately incentivizing and upskilling our partners, NetApp Partner Sphere will fuel our collective innovation in the cloud and customers’ transformation journeys.

In addition, the programme offers simplified, flexible, progressive tiering with clear criteria that partners can follow across objective thresholds. The programme’s tiers range from Approved, to Preferred, to Prestige, to Prestige Plus – assessing, validating and recognising partners based on value and competencies, in order to identify the right partners for the right customer opportunities. Benefits and support will grow as partners ascend tiers, with the partners generating the most impact seeing the broadest and most customised benefits, including solution specific marketing campaigns and enablement, proposal-based market development funds, and preferred value-based incentives.

As part of these strategic changes NetApp will shift away from specialisations to identify partner capabilities and utilise solution competencies aligned to key NetApp focus areas - Cloud solutions, Hybrid Cloud, AI and Analytics. These competencies will be included in the NetApp Partner Sphere programme requirements. Partners will be able to begin earning associated competencies within each category, showcasing their ability to deliver customer success across the NetApp portfolio by the end of the calendar year.

With NetApp Partner Sphere, partners can expect -

·         A simple framework supporting each partner’s unique go-to-market strategy, providing flexibility and automation to ease partner processes, and consistency for all partners and sales motions from a single program with clear tiers and objectives.

·         Transformative training, tools and support to activate their work in the hybrid multi-cloud market, enabling and building partner services and solutions competencies.

·         Differentiation with partners distinguished, highlighted and endorsed by their Solution Competencies and services on NetApp Partner Connect to promote each partner’s go-to-market approach.

·         Accelerated cloud growth leveraging NetApp’s in-demand portfolio to fuel opportunities for value-add partner-led services and co-innovation, improving profitability and maximizing partner ROI with progressive tiers.

“As a long-time NetApp partner, we’ve always valued NetApp’s partner-first approach to its business, and the maturation of its partner program to enable and contribute to GDT’s growth and profitability,” said John Woodall, Vice President, Solutions Architecture at General Datatech. “With NetApp’s new Partner Sphere program and its industry-leading cloud portfolio, we’re excited to be able to deliver immense value to our joint customers with the most effective, flexible and innovative solutions across any environment – while differentiating our business to accelerate growth and successfully monetize our best-of-breed services capabilities.”

“Cloud Bridge is a cloud-native, services-led business – so we fully support the strategy and direction for NetApp’s new partner program,” said Simon Walker, Managing Director at Cloud Bridge. “With NetApp bringing all of its partners into one consolidated program and integrating Spot partners, we can take advantage of NetApp’s full portfolio to offer a full suite of innovative solutions and services to our customers.”

Implementation of the NetApp Partner Sphere program will begin in NetApp FY’24.

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