APC shines up channel program

US hardware vendor American Power Conversion (APC) has polished up its global channel program and rolled out a new reward initiative.

“Partners will be offered three revised levels of channel partner participation as well as the rollout of APC’s new Opportunity Registration Program (ORP),” the vendor said in a statement.

APC said it planned to provide more discounts to partners who had invested heavily in pre-sales.

Partners would be split into three tiers, authorised, silver or gold, based partly on their sales and engineering certifications. All levels offer preferred pricing, training and marketing support, APC said.

The ORP would reward channel companies for generating incremental deals, the vendor said.

Authorised level partners would chase sales for APC’s InfraStruXure data centre boxes. APC would offer them training and access to APC’s website, the vendor said.

Silvers would be similar, but their sales force personnel and engineers would have to show themselves able to design InfraStruXure systems for up to 20 kilowatts (kW).

Gold partners would be expected to know about Network Critical Physical Infrastructure (NCPI) and be competent using APC’s online configuration tools.  “Sales force personnel and engineers must also be competent to design InfraStruXure systems up to 80kW,” the vendor said.

APC would train partners for free, schedule “customer education events” and offer direct field support on initial sales opportunities.

Ed Bednarcik, vice president of global sales at APC, claimed the vendor was “forcing” the industry to “move past the old, inefficient way” of designing closets, computer rooms and data centres.

APC was especially targeting partners focused around VoIP, blades and 1U servers and other technologies that needed high availability and power density. Its InfraStruXure and NCPI offerings were being pushed to consultancy practices, he said.