David Elliott - Channel Sales Director of A/NZ, Aruba
Hewlett Packard Enterprise subsidiary, Aruba Networks, has launched a new partner program to help partners capitalise on opportunities in the mobility market.
The networking vendor said the program mixes elements of existing programs from Aruba and its parent company, HPE.
ARN can confirm that deal registration elements of the existing HPE Partner Ready program have been ported across, combining with aspects of the tiered pricing infrastructure form Aruba’s Partner Edge program.
"We have also taken some of the elements of the rebates made available to partners for specialisation in wireless LAN, traditional switching and ClearPass," Aruba A/NZ channel sales director, David Elliott, told ARN.
"The intent was to build a world-class networking partner program. It has taken us some time to come out with this and it is all about rewarding partners for investment and success, and making partners profitable.
“Each of those elements are around partner profitability and for investment capability, focus on particular areas, depending on where that partner focusses and what they want to do.
In developing the new program, Elliott said the vendor engaged with partners at Aruba’s annual partner events and periodically throughout the year via regional channel managers.
HPE integration
With 18 months now passed since HPE acquired Aruba, Elliott said the vendor has been working closely to integrate solutions and partner incentives into its new offering.
Elliott said the company has had a positive reaction from the local channel community and continues to innovate to attempt to deliver success for partners.
“We are maintaining our brand, we have grown our business significantly and have put more resources on the ground to support our 100 per cent partner driven approach," he added.
Elliott said Aruba has also hired six channel managers in the last five to six months to support the company’s growth in different regions within the country.
“We continue to invest in our global AirHeads community, which now has 46,000 members, that continues to grow," he added.
Leveraging ISV communities
Aruba has recently taken steps to engage with several independent software vendors (ISVs) at a global and local level to give partners access to technologies outside its core offerings.
One such ISV is Sydney-based Kasada, which specialises in multi-factor authentication.
The company’s co-founder and CTO, Sam Crowther, said Aruba has helped the company gain access to sections of the market, such as enterprise network authentication, that it would not otherwise have been able to penetrate.
“They [Aruba] have their ClearPass technology which manages connections to the network and they built their ClearPass Extensions platform which allowed us to take away that password from the initial connection to a wireless network and replace it with our simple authentication which is based around the user’s mobile phone,” he explained.
Crowther said the goal of the company was to make user authentication in the workplace more akin to the consumer experience.
“Instead of having to change your password every month or three months and reconnect to the network each time, it is much simpler to open up your laptop, have it automatically connect and scan your thumb print on your phone," he added.
Kasada operates a 100 per cent channel model and Crowther said its partnership with Aruba has already, and would continue to give, it access to some of the vendor’s larger clients and the partners that service them.
“We have already seen a few opportunities come from some financial services organisations which we never previously would have even tried to approach because we are too small," he added.
“However, because we are able to help Aruba do some things they were not previously able to do, they have brought us in on some of these conversations."
