Vendors step up with COVID-19 relief

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has taken the world by storm as governments and health officials enact social distancing rules to help prevent the virus' spread.

These restrictions have proven to be challenging for world economiesin general and the IT channel in particular.

Fortunately, some vendors have dug deep to help channel partners and customers stay afloat during these challenging times.

We've compiled a selection of vendor offers to show you what you can gain as a partner.

Did we miss anything? Please let us know at editors@crn.com.au.

Dell

The vendor is offering its partners a series of finanal and training initatives for its partners. 

These include zero-percent interest rates for infrastructure solutions, up to 180-day payment deferral on eligible products and short-term options for remote work and learning solutions with six to 12-month terms.

Dell also has refresh options for laptops and desktops and one-year term flexible consumption offerings through Dell Technologies On Demand for storage, hybrid cloud, converged, hyperconverged and data protection solutions.

In addition, Dell's two top teirs of partners  (platinum and titanium) will be able to access a one time payout of up to 50 per cent of yearly marketing development funds (MDF) by providing a marketing plan.

Finally, Dell is offering fee-waved Services Deployment training for its storage Unity XT, hyperconverged VxRail and data protection DP4400 solutions until May 31, 2020.

Microsoft

By far the most popular offer from Microsoft has been its Teams collaboration software which it has offered free for six months.

The vendor has also loosened some requirements mfor its channel.

Partners with a competency anniversary date between 1 January and 30 June 2020 will receive an extension until their next anniversary date, in 2021.

For partners enrolled in Azure advanced specializations with a renewal date before Dec. 31, meanwhile, Microsoft will now extend the anniversary date until June 30, 2021.

Partners in the Azure Expert MSP program with audit or renewal dates in 2020--or partners looking to apply for the program for the first time--will also get extensions and loosened audit requirements in some cases, according to Microsoft.

Additionally, for training and certifications, Microsoft is increasing the number of digital testing centers so certification exams can be done at home, waiving rescheduling fees, and extending exam voucher expiration dates.

There are also several updates to incentives for Microsoft partners.

Incentive payouts are being increased for non-FastTrack partners who work with customers to achieve 15-percent usage in Teams deployments, while FastTrack partners will now be eligible for a new incentive "at the lowest qualified entitlement level," Schuster said. Those incentives are being offered through Sept. 30.

As for the Microsoft Partner Agreement, partners that have not accepted the agreement as of April will not be prevented from transacting as originally communicated. 

Hewllet Packard Enterprise

Both HPE and subsidiary Aruba have suspended partner revenue thresholds in the wake of the pandemic.

The revenue threshold relief ensures partners will stay at the same level in the two Partner Ready programs for 2021 even if they do not meet revenue commitment levels.

All Platinum, Gold and Silver partners will retain their current membership tier benefits even if they do not meet revenue commitments.

At the same time it is suspending revenue thresholds, HPE is stepping up training and certifications with a prime focus on the GreenLake pay-per-use consumption portfolio.

The company's financial services arm launched a US$2 billion Payment Relief Program, which allows customers to defer over 90 percent of the total contract value of products and services until 2021, is helping partners close sales with customers grappling with the financial fallout from the pandemic.

Partner relief in the form of the distributor “liquidity” initiatives includes providing extended payment and early payment discount terms. The cash relief offers run from May 1 to July 31.

HPE has developed additional preconfigured GreenLake pay-per-use midmarket offers aimed at driving more recurring revenue for the channel.

The preconfigured GreenLake as-a-service midmarket offers are priced at US$100,000 to US$300,000 over multiple years.

Fortinet

Fortinet is leveraging curriculum from its NSE Institute’s training and certification program to offer 24 advanced security courses for free.

This will allow partners to skill up on the vendor's technologies at no charge till the end of 2020. 

HP Inc.

Through its HP University, the vendor is offering online, on-demand learning options in order to help its partners optimise revenue and future-proof their businesses.

Learning options cover a variety of topics including sales skills, education, product training and certifications.

For end-customers, HP, in league with its finance partners, will offer a number of financial and asset lifecycle options, including deferred or reduced payments until 2021, short-term rentals and cash infusion for HP devices through a sale leaseback program. 

HP said qualified customers could convert existing, owned workplace assets into a payment solution or acquire technology needed today with reduced payments for the remainder of 2020 to alleviate temporary cash flow challenges.

A security campaign to address potential cybersecurity risks for those working or learning at home has also been launched.

Tips and advice online will be available in addition to free customer webinars to help users get set up at home securely. 

HP is also going to offer its application containerisation software Sure Click Pro free of charge through to September 30 2020. The offer will be available for use on both HP and non-HP Windows 10 PCs. 

To address heightened customer support requests, HP said it had provided extra training and resources to its 24/7 contact centre agents.

Nutanix

The vendor has launched its Nutanix Special Financial Assistance Program to provide channel partners with extended payment terms. Nutanix is also offering 180-day deferred payments through its Nutanix Financial Solutions organisation as well as free certification exams.

It has also launched a Work From Anywhere initiative that includes a 30-day free trial of Xi Frame, the company’s flagship Desktop as a Service solution.

In addition, last month Nutanix launched FastTrack for VDI, a new offer that enables channel partners to create a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment in days, not months. The company is providing partners with assistance for rapid VDI deployment, simplified pre-built configurations, estimated delivery dates and enhanced channel incentives that not only gives rebates to the solution provider as a company, but individual sales reps and engineers as well.

Read the full story here.

Runecast 

The VMWare specalist vendor's local channel chief Andre Carpenter (pictured) said it is offering a free Runecast Analyzer trial with full VMware Horizon insights enabled until 15 September 2020.

In an effort targeted at the health sector, the vendor is also offering a free full Runecast Analyzer license for hospitals or clinics running VMware or AWS.

IBM

IBM has extended the PartnerWorld Program revalidation grace period from 5 May 2020 to 1 Jan 2021, during which time partners will not decline in program level or lose a competency.

The vendor also suspended Channel Value Reward (CVR) revalidation requirements for 2020, allowing partners additional time to prepare and complete necessary testing.

IBM is allowing additional time for partners to submit competency co-marketing plans by lengthening the planning period.

The vendor also launched special 90-day software offerings and trials at no cost for cloud and cognitive software.

It also defined a distinct set of solutions for partners and customers around the company’s IBM Power, IBM Security, IBM Storage, IBM Z mainframes and LinuxOne systems.

A key element of IBM’s lineup of partner assistance offerings is a new, state-of-the-art marketing platform, IBM My Digital Marketing, that partners can use to execute end-to-end digital marketing campaigns.

That complements the My Digital Marketing Promotion assistance the company launched in February to help solution providers build and execute second-quarter marketing campaigns.

IBM said more than 1800 partners had already taken up the offering.

Motorola

The telecommunications vendor is offering its WAVE push-to-talk service free to critical industries in Australia and New Zealand until the end of June 2020.

Motorola said the offer will enable essential organisations to benefit from the capabilities the service delivers to mobilise frontline workers and unify group communications across multiple technology users.

Alibaba Cloud

China’s biggest cloud computing provider, Alibaba Cloud, will invest a whopping US$28.2 billion in cloud infrastructure and the construction of datacentres over the next three years as it prepares to help digital transformation efforts in a “post-pandemic world.”

Aimed at building next-generation hyperscale datacentres, Alibaba Cloud will invest US$28.2 billion in innovation and the development of operating systems, servers and chips for its data center infrastructure.

Alibaba Cloud plans to build additional datacentres on top of its existing 63 availability zones covering 21 regions across the globe including Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

Alibaba Cloud is one of the top cloud providers in the Asia-Pacific market and is striving to battle public cloud titans Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure as the worldwide cloud computing leader.

AWS

On Monday 4 May, students and teachers across Australia and New Zealand gained access access free computer science learning experiences through an Amazon sponsored virtual robotics and coding training program.

The program will be free of charge for one month per user in an effort to increase access to computer science education and help to keep students engaged during school closures. The selected courses will be available from Monday 4 May until the end of June 2020.

Cisco

The tech giant  announced its Business Resiliency Program in April, which will extend US$2.5 billion in financing.

Via the terms of the new program, customers have 90 days from the time an order is placed to start making payments. After that, customers only have to pay 1 percent of the total contract value of the cost of a new product or solution until 2021.

From January 2021 and on, customers can then make a monthly payment based on the total financed amount and the remaining term of the contract, including 36, 48, and 50-month contracts.

GitHub

The Microsoft subsidiary houses the largest developer community in the world with over 40 million developers and 44 million repositories created in 2019.  
 
Access is now available for teams and includes free private repositories, with unlimited collaborators according to a company blog post.

Individual developers now also have access to unlimited collaborators for private repositories.

The company also reduced the price of the paid Team plan which will go from US$9 per user/month to US$4 per user/month.

Citrix

In addition to changes to its partner program in February, the vendor has launched a virtual series designed to share tips and best practices for staying engaged and productive while working from home.

Called Remote Works the content is billed as a “unique collection of engaging podcasts, on-demand webinars and interviews,” and is targeted at partners, customers and end users. 

Pure Storage

The storage provider is offering three months of its Pure-as-a-Service consumption model for all new customers with a 12-month contract term of 50 TiBs at no cost in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The program offers pay-as-you-go billing, with no overprovisioning or additional assets on the books for three to five years.