Silver Peak doubles down on global Partner Edge Programme

Silver Peak has introduced a range of sweeping enhancements to the company’s global Partner Edge programme. In addition to onboarding seasoned channel executives to lead the organisation forward, the company is making strategic investments to build the industry’s most robust and expansive SD-WAN partner programme and equip partners to drive business opportunity and growth in a hyper-growth market that industry analyst firm IDC projects will exceed $8B USD in 2021.

Modern programmes empower partners
After a thorough review, Silver Peak has aligned its Partner Edge programme to be more predictable, while making incentives and value-added offerings easier to obtain for partners. The intent is to shift the focus toward being partner-first by offering clear and concise programmes that maximise partner value. New programs include:

• New partner tier criteria: This foundational programme will provide all partners with a clear path to understanding what is required at the Silver, Gold and Platinum tiers. Partners will clearly understand what is required at each tier, including up-front revenue and training objectives. With a more predictable model, partners can tightly align their SD-WAN investments directly to a set of partner rewards, enabling them to see the direct correlation between their investments and revenue growth, margins and profitability.
• Partner accelerators: This new programme, available to Gold and Platinum partners, creates a set of Silver Peak incentives with the sole purpose of rewarding partners that focus on growth initiatives in selling the Unity EdgeConnect™ SD-WAN edge platform. Incentives will be introduced every 6 months and offered for a period of 6-to-12 months, enabling partners to plan ahead while opening new routes to expanded revenues. The programme spans several reward levels and includes partner level, sales and technical team rewards. Partners realise the direct margin benefit to their company when they shift customers away from shrinking hardware margins toward higher-margin software-defined offerings.
• Deal edge: A new programmatic approach now available to Gold and Platinum partners, enables Silver Peak inside and field sales teams to pass active leads directly to partners in a highly collaborative manner. Engaging partners from the start provides a more focused and measured approach to teaming in front of customers and makes the sales process more predictable, expediting time to revenue for partners.

“The Silver Peak enhanced partner programmes and resources are well timed, because as enterprises accelerate their journey to the cloud, they are reassessing their network requirements and shifting toward SD-WAN,” said Tom Cahill, vice president, product and partner management, CDW. “The Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect SD-WAN edge platform is a welcome addition to CDW’s portfolio.”

“It’s an exciting time to be a Silver Peak partner as the company doubles-down on its partner programmes just as enterprises accelerate their journey to the cloud, reassess their network requirements and shift toward SD-WAN,” said Jim Johnson, CTO at Align. “The new programme rewards, resources and enablement tools are going to go a long way toward advancing our clients' transition toward a business-first networking model to fully realise the transformational promise of the cloud.”

Introductory Partner Accelerators programme:
Silver Peak understands that in order to win in the SD-WAN market partners must invest in resources and training. To enable partners to realise the highest level of financial reward in this competitive market, Silver Peak is introducing two new incentives that will be available to Gold and Platinum tier partners immediately.

• New customer incentive: An incremental margin incentive of up to 10 percent paid to the partner at the close of a new EdgeConnect SD-WAN edge platform opportunity. This incentive not only includes the first order, but extends to all follow-on business from that customer for 12-months following the initial sale.
• Fast start incentive: An additional two percent incentive will be paid against all new EdgeConnect customer sales. This incentive 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 new Silver Peak Partner Edge channel programmes, incentives and enablement tools and resources will enable us to focus even more energy into our strategic partnership with Silver Peak,” said Jason Evans, director of disruptive technology for Wavenet. “We’re confident the new programmes and resources will enable the Wavenet team to deliver the Silver Peak market leading EdgeConnect SD-WAN edge platform to even more stand-out clients, who will join our rapidly growing and impressive set of customer references.”

Industry leading enablement tools and resources
To fully support and empower partners, Silver Peak is making investments to expand its best-in-class enablement tools and resources. The company is making the following key updates:

• Silver Peak technology experience centre: Silver Peak will provide Platinum tier partners with direct access to its uniqe online platform, enabling partners to quickly proto-type, test and demonstrate the advanced technical features and capabilities of the EdgeConnect SD-WAN edge platform, reducing the time from customer evaluation to purchase.
• Refreshed training: Silver Peak has refreshed all its training materials and courses to reflect the latest innovations across the EdgeConnect platform, aiding partners in maintaining the currency of their technical expertise. New training offerings were developed with the busy partner in mind, relying on video and a modular self-paced approach to ease consumption. All training and certification programmes are available as self-pace or instructor-led and are complimentary to all partners.
• Authorised Deployment Partners: The ADP partner programme, announced in August of 2018, provides a path for partners to become a certified post sales arm of Silver Peak and offer customers complete turn-key deployment and management services for the EdgeConnect SD-WAN edge platform.
• Channel resources: Silver Peak continues to make investments in attracting and hiring the best industry talent to lead its channel sales organisations. In addition, the company has invested in a newly formed field marketing team that will work closely with partners to develop integrated marketing plans to fully leverage the company’s overall investments in marketing.

“We are making great strides toward becoming a channel-first company and today’s announcement serves to underscore our commitment to partners, rewarding them for growing their business with Silver Peak and helping them to capitalise on the financial benefits of the SD-WAN market,” said Michael O’Brien, vice president, worldwide channel sales at Silver Peak. “Together with our partners, Silver Peak is liberating enterprises from the compromises and constraints of existing WAN approaches and empowering them to shift to a business-first networking model with the EdgeConnect SD-WAN edge platform to fully realise the transformational power of the cloud.”