“The complexity and growth of data have been key drivers over the last few years and MapR partners have attained the skills and experience to deliver high value projects that solve existing business challenges while unlocking insightful new opportunities,” said Tony Young, Director of Alliances and Channels, EMEA for MapR.
MapR runs a channel program each with three tiers; Affiliate, Preferred and Elite. The largest is the Consulting Partner accounting for 60% of its ecosystem which includes local, national and regional consultants and systems integrators that provide consulting services and related implementation, integration, and training services to joint customers. Consultants may resell MapR licenses, but services are the primary revenue driver.
“Since we launched our partner programs in 2015, we have experienced consistent organic growth through working closely with partners to bring clients from proof of concept to fully fledged production environments,” says Young, “However, MapR does not compete with partners on professional services revenues and has embraced a strategy that is not tied to a particular hardware, database or deployment philosophy to ensure the widest possible customer community.”
“Growth in Europe has been strong over the last 24 months and we now have a core of great partners with expertise within large enterprises and particularly retail and financial services,” says Young. “However, we still believe there is room for partner acquisition in the Nordic and Middle East regions and for partners with specialisations in areas such as manufacturing, pharmaceutical and public sector.”
Young also highlights the potential of the Internet of Things area, “This is still an emerging space and some of the initial projects we have done in this area have been led by partners with deep industry knowledge,” he says. “Partners should not underestimate their experience in vertical markets as a great way of breaking into new areas such as IoT and MapR is expanding its training commitment to help partners capitalise on this opportunity.”