Akamai this week revamped its channel program in a way that provides partners with greater incentives if they develop the expertise required to sell and service Akamai software and services on their own.
The existing Akamai channel program was designed around an agent model that rewarded partners for leads that led to the consumption of content delivery network (CDN) and associated security services sold by Akamai. The current Akamai Partner Program provides rewards and incentives for solution providers, fulfillment partners, and global systems integrators that own the transaction with the customer.
The tiered sales value structure Akamai employs to compensate partners has also been updated to provide globally consistent benefits.
The revamped program will provide partners that want to invest the time and effort required to master the Akamai portfolio with the training and certifications required to independently sell and sell and service Akamai offerings, says Micheal McCollough, global vice president for channels and alliances at Akamai.
Partners can opt to achieve Basic or Advanced Certification levels, with additional training options and pricing incentives for Advanced Partners.
“We’re trying to meet partner where they are,” says McCollough.
The Akamai CDN is widely employed to accelerate access to Web sites using caching in addition to deploying Web and mobile applications more efficiently. In the last few years, Akamai has also extended the reach of its network to provide managed services to also secure those applications in a way that serves to isolate corporate networks from potential attacks.
At the same time, a wave of venture capital has fueled the rise of several upstarts that are now challenging Akamai’s CDN dominance. In addition, cloud service providers have begun offering CDN services as well. Much of the interest in CDNs is being fueled by the growing interest in deploying software at the network edge to enable, for example, an Internet of Things (IoT) application.
It’s not clear how big a role CDNs will play in enabling edge computing applications but as the size and scope of these initiatives come into sharper focus there may one day soon be more software deployed on various edge computing platforms than there is today in the cloud.
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