Meet the Equinix customer who became the channel chief

Glen Hastings, channel director at Equinix Australia, explains how he went from Equinix customer to channel boss in Australia.

Journey

Prior to Equinix, I worked in systems integration and managed services, and in that business, I was a direct customer of Equinix. Over the years, I got to know the team and the business well, and I always enjoyed working with Equinix as a vendor. 

A few years ago, Jeremy Deutsch [managing director of Equinix Australia] and I had a discussion about how Equinix could work more effectively across its large ecosystem of carriers, systems integration partners, managed service providers and cloud service providers to solve the evolving needs of enterprise – that was my door in. 

Program

The Equinix channel partner program is a global initiative that is designed for managed service providers, network service providers, systems integrators and software providers to help design and deploy the right IT and cloud solutions for enterprise customers. 

The strong growth we’ve seen since the launch of the program is a testament to the clear value partners are experiencing. 

Partners are able to increase their ability to build a profitable, recurring revenue stream and create new offerings for enterprises to re-architect their IT to interconnect people, clouds and data. As part of this program, we have dedicated partner account managers to support our partner network and help them utilise the elements of the program to ensure their enterprise customers are able to take maximum advantage of hybrid- and multi-cloud strategies.  

Awards 

Equinix is currently in the process of holding our inaugural partner awards in Asia-Pacific. The objective of the awards is to recognise companies that have demonstrated a unique ability to deliver innovation and results with Equinix. The award winners will be announced in Q2 of 2017. 

Achievements

I am very proud of the work that Equinix has done to cement ourselves as the heart of the digital economy. In the markets in which we operate, Equinix is best placed to support partners and customers as they navigate change providing the broadest set of interconnection options to our customers. We’ve helped to transform the technology industry and partner landscape, delivering innovative solutions to new enterprise customers each and every month. 

Lesson learned

Sales is a process, and someone once explained to me that channel sales is like baking a cake. If you want to bake a cake, follow the process. It’s vital because once you’ve mastered the process, you’re able to successfully build partner networks and relationships, and ultimately meet their needs too. Following the process has served our team and our partners well.

Future Projects

One particular project about to get underway is an all-business transformation effort; working in tandem with global application and cloud vendors, managed by one of the world’s leading technology companies who is transforming one of Australia’s largest companies. It’s a massive effort and a tremendous outcome for all, but most importantly, it has enabled us to develop a blueprint that we can take to other organisations that are investigating the mix of legacy on-premise, hosted infrastructure and cloud services in their business.