Sapphire, Emerald & Diamond are the new Silver, Gold & Platinum

This blog is posted on behalf of Joe Gerkman, Global Director – SUSE One Partner Program.

Today, we announced some changes to the SUSE One Partner Program.  

It’s been over two years since we made some significant changes to the SUSE One Partner Program in recognition of that we needed to evolve the program to better meet the changing business models and partner landscape. 

The changes that we’re making are a continuation of that continuing evolution – we want to ensure that our Partner Program continues to not only meet our partners’ needs but also allow us to partner effectively to deliver innovative solutions that solve the most difficult challenges that enterprises have. 

How is the SUSE One Partner Program being updated? 

1.Tier names 

We have decided to update the tier names in the program from Silver, Gold and Platinum to Sapphire, Emerald and Diamond respectively.   

On the surface, this is a simple name change. The motivation for this name change is not to stealthily introduce any new requirements!  

Rather, we believe that while metals-based partner programs have their place, we are cognizant of the different business models and go-to-market approaches of our partners and the ecosystems around them.   

The move to gems – Sapphire, Emerald and Diamond, we think, better represent that forward-looking approach.  

The new naming system makes it easier for partners to understand and communicate their level within the program, and the increased resources and support that we provide at each tier, will help partners to better sell and support SUSE products. 

With the SUSE One Partner Program we’ve also taken our partners’ business models into account via Specialization streams.  Our specializations allow our partners to focus their partnership with us in one area or expand their partnership across multiple go-to-markets.  

Partners in different specializations also choose to work together on specific customer projects, leveraging each other’s strengths to construct a complete and optimal solution to customers. 

2. Specialization name change:  BUILD to SOLUTION 

BUILD was one of the six specializations that were launched when we premiered the SUSE One Partner Program. The partners who participate in BUILD are the ones who create market-specific, industry agnostic, or use-case driven end-to-end solutions across SUSE offerings with collaboration & support from SUSE technical teams. These solutions are generally marketed and sold by the partner through their own ecosystem or reseller channels. Our community of OEM and embedded partners belong to this specialization.  

More than two years since the launch of the SUSE One Partner Program, we have gathered enough feedback to know that we need to change this specialization name to SOLUTION, to better reflect the expertise and finesse that our partners in this specialization bring to the table.  

What’s not changing is that partners in the SOLUTION specialization can still expect that as they advance up the tiers, they will unlock access to special pricing, supported sales coverage, and technical pre-sales resources that kick-start go-to-market activity across a range of solutions, from embedded systems, and single-purpose software appliances, to fully validated hardware and software stacks. 

The Power of Many. Together as One. 

The changes that we’ve announced today serve as a way for us to recognize the changing times that our partners operate in, as well as demonstrating how we want to make sure we continue to cater to our partners needs amidst these changing times. 

Together with our partner community, we can be and are “better together” in the scope of our offerings and ability to better meet the needs of our joint customers.