Eaton Power Advantage Program Sets Bar For Partner Excellence

Sydney Neely Many solution providers are feeling uncertain and frustrated with recent vendors announcements in the virtualization space. One vendor, though, says it can help them with a transition to a new virtualization platform. Joining me to share a path forward for partners during this challenging time is Hervé Tardy and Donna St-Denis from Eaton. Hervé, can you share your insights on the fallout of this industry shakeup and what impact this makes on partners? Hervé Tardy Yeah, we'd be happy to answer this question. So we've seen the major change, obviously in the channel with this announcement at the beginning of the year of a major virtualization vendor deciding to eliminate almost the channel from their sales. It's very painful for a lot of our partners. It's a little bit heartbreaking for Eaton because, again, for the last 15 years, we've been leading with this message about virtualization plus power means Eaton. Now we have to probably to to change gears a little bit. And this is what we are committed to do. But the most important to me would be to be able to support the channel partners in this very difficult transition that is ahead of them. Sydney Neely Hervé., How has it and responded to the concerns and frustrations expressed by partners following what's happened? Hervé Tardy Many of them are looking for an alternative. The good news is Eaton has been very well known for the last 15 years of supporting virtualization with power and that's how we built really our success in the channel. Many people maybe didn't know that Eaton can do this type of integration with a lot of different virtualization partners, and not only the leading one, which means that if they are evaluating Nutanix, either evaluating Microsoft, Hyper-V, evaluating Scale Computing, we can actually integrate our power products with these platforms just as well as the the leading vendor. that's the good news. From a technical standpoint, we can do it. And to help them in this again transition, which will be probably painful and difficult. We want to give them an additional rebate and we will be introducing a Powered by Eaton Rebate, which is the highest level of rebate that Eaton is making available to channel partners for them when they will be quoting a project that leveraging Nutanix Scale computing or Microsoft Hyper-V to really help them with this transition. Sydney Neely It sounds like a great incentive for partners. Hervé. Now, Donna, this is an exciting time. Can you tell us about the completely revamped partner program and what exciting changes partners can expect? Donna St-Denis We're celebrating the Power Advantage Program 15th year anniversary, and we're taking that occasion to relaunch our program, revamp it. We have a couple of new benefits that we’ll disclose at the channel conference coming a bit later this year. One of them is enhanced benefits. We are putting annual revenue threshold to our tiers and that enables us to give more attractive margins to the partners, discounts and promotion, like Hervé. mentioned, will come out in Q2 with the promotion for Power Solution in a virtualized environment. Two would be the marketing development funds package that we have set aside at the top tier. So MDF is such a great tool for our partners to use and leverage so they can create their own lead for their business and grow their power and connectivity business. And three, it's continuity. We're not completely changing. We want to still keep it user friendly and simple. So, for example, the power audit program that is offered at all tiers is still part of the program. This is such a great tool for our partners. When they have an opportunity, they call in Eaton for power assessment at the end user level. In those cases, 90% of those opportunities close Sydney Neely Some great tools and benefits for partners. Donna, looking forward, what do you envision for Eaton’s Partner Program and how will you continue to support and empower partners? Donna St-Denis We want to continue our collaboration with our partners. In fact, we're launching an advisory council this year where we're going to listen to partners, garner their insight and be able to apply that in our future business strategies. For the future, really, this program, the structure we have, we want to continue to keep it simple, show the benefits that partners get when they partner with us.