GitLab, a provider of a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform employed to accelerate application development and deployment, this week announced it has revamped its channel program as part of an effort to drive more consumption of its commercial add-on offerings for the platform.
The GitLab Partner Program is now organized around three tracks. An Open track provides partners product discounts, rebates and referral fees for identifying new customers, opportunities, and delivering services that drive the adoption and use of the GitLab platform. A Select track focuses on partners that build a dedicated GitLab practice to deliver professional services that drive additional recurring revenues for GitLab.
A third Technology track is focused on independent software vendors (ISVs) that provide complementary solutions.
The primary focus of GitLab in the channel is to identify partners that already have enough DevOps expertise to drive consumption of the GitLab platform beyond the base open source edition, says Michelle Hodges, vice president of global channels for GitLab.
GitLab already has 100,000 customers, but Hodges says the opportunity to drive additional consumption of commercial add-ons to the platform is high as more organizations adopt best DevOps practices to build and deploy applications.
“We’re at a point of ascendency for DevOps in the channel,” says Hodges.
From a partner perspective, the opportunity is made simpler because so many developers that make use of the community edition of GitLab have already been identified. The challenge is engaging those customers by providing, for example, assessment of their DevOps practices that eventually lead to increased consumption of the GitLab platform.
There’s also a significant opportunity to deliver managed DevOps services that combine the management of private edition of GitLab with consulting services, notes Hodges.
It’s not clear to what degree organizations will continue building and deploying applications during the economic downturn brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, but Hodges says GitLab has yet to see any sign of a downturn. The challenge and opportunity for partners is to identify those organizations that still have an appetite for rolling out new applications as fast as possible.
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