NetApp tries to identify the right partners for the right customer opportunities

Ganesan Arumugam
Director, Channel Sales, NetApp India

“NetApp has recently announced its intent to launch NetApp Sphere, an evolution of its industry-leading Unified Partner Program in FY’24. The new cloud-focused and services-led NetApp Partner Sphere delivers a flexible path to advancement and growth for all partner sales motions.”

In a digital and a data-driven world, harnessing the cloud is a constant challenge faced by enterprises. Having a robust partner ecosystem that is well-versed with the cloud and its applications will play a vital role in aiding enterprises to derive maximum business impact from their digital transformation journeys.

NetApp has recently announced its intent to launch NetApp Sphere, an evolution of its industry-leading Unified Partner Program in fiscal year 2024 (FY’24). 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 programs into one that includes all partner types, business models and routes to market, this program enables partners to evolve their business in the cloud.

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

When designing its partner program, NetApp is mindful of offering simplified, flexible, progressive tiering with clear criteria that partners can follow across objective thresholds. The program’s tiers range from approved, to preferred, to prestige, to prestige plus – assessing, validating and recognizing partners based on values and competencies, in order to identify the right partners for the right customer opportunities.

The benefits and support that NetApp offers will grow as partners ascend tiers, generating the most impact seeing the most customized benefits, including solution specific marketing campaigns, proposal-based market development funds, and preferred value-based incentives. By appropriately incentivizing and upskilling its partners, NetApp Partner Sphere will fuel its collective innovation in the cloud and customers’ transformation journeys.