Vendor Partner Advice?

Does anyone have any experience becoming a partner for vendors? I'm in a situation where that might come in handy, and I was curious what is involved in becoming a partner, and what sort of benefits you have received from that. It would be nice to leverage my certs and help out the business if it's possible. I haven't looked into this at all, so please don't spend a lot of time describing the basics; I'll do some research when I get home. I was just curious if anyone had any advice or personal stories to share. TIA.

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Comments

UnixGuy

The company I work for is partners with major vendors: Sun, Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, IBM..

I'll tell you what I know:

As for Cisco, I think they require a CCIE. And I remember Cisco people coming and checking for how the business is handled at our company. Also they require some certifications from the engineers, like a number of CCNP people..things like that, and there are levels of partnership: Golden, platinum, silver...etc

the major benefit is discounts. you get discounts.

Also, I think certain level of partnership require a minimum sales target to be met.

As for Sun, you get the benefit of free (and mandatory) instructor led trainings. Also for Sun, there are web courses that need to be completed as a target for the company, along with a sales target.

The major benefit is discount I guess. And you get people from Sun coming and doing seminars and assisting in sales stuff.

For IBM, I think it's fairly simple, it's like you need to have 2 certified people. Certified in a hardware classroom training that will be offered free of charge. Something like this.

That's all I know, if you need further information on specific vendor, I can ask.

darkerosxx

You can get discounts at Cisco without a CCIE and even without a CCNP. There are services you can offer where they will subsidize your work, such as switching a company using other equipment to using Cisco devices. It really depends on what you're doing and what kind of services you're offering as to whether it will be useful to be a Cisco partner.

Cisco Partner Info: Become a Registered Partner - Cisco Systems