Aruba unveils channel award winners + SMB and partner strategies

Aruba has unveiled its small to medium business strategy and partner strategy at its Aruba Atmosphere (ATM) Asia Pacific Partner Conference, which was a fully virtual event for the first time.

The event, which attracts hundreds of partner attendees every year, came as the highly anticipated ATM has also gone online amid the ongoing global pandemic. Along with the new format, this year's event outlined how Aruba was poised to collaborate with partners by providing them with new business models to navigate the changing market landscape and to become digital-ready.

"The ATM Asia Pacific Partner Conference is a significant gathering for Aruba's channel partner community. We have made great strides in collaborating with our partners particularly during these unprecedented times," says Anthony Smith, director Asia, Pacific and Japan Aruba Channel at Aruba.

"We remain fully committed to delivering products, programs and services that support their business goals and helping partners grow their opportunities," he says.

Aruba announced its partner strategy will focus on managed services, delivering network solutions as everything-as-a-service (XaaS) given the rapid shift to cloud, digital transformation and emergence of hybrid workplace.

These will include partner branded and Aruba-branded offerings that Aruba partners will exclusively take to market:

Partner Branded: for Aruba Partners who wish resell and deliver to customers their network solutions.
Partner-Aruba Branded: for Aruba managed services providers, using the partner's own capability to deliver cloud-managed networks to their customers using an as-a-service model underpinned by the partners own network operations center (NOC) and customer success staff. 
Aruba Branded: for partners to deliver to their customers, using Aruba cloud managed network, supported by Aruba's NOC and customer success staff based on an as-a-service model using subscription billing.

"With the changing enterprise needs brought by the accelerated phase of their digital transformation journeys, our focus is to provide our channel partners a robust set of programs that will help them scale business results," adds Smith.

"This plan will outline through our 'six bold moves,' which will help guide Aruba partners and distributors on this journey into the next fiscal year."

Aruba also announced its small to medium business (SMB) strategy which aims to support companies through cloud managed and app managed network solutions such as the Aruba Instrant On products to keep their business up and running. This strategy allows partners to customise their approach achieve profitability and establish differentiation in the market for customers.

Earlier in June 2020, Aruba made enhancements to its Aruba Partner Ready for Managed Services Porvider (MSP) program that will give partners more flexibility when working with customers.

"Through MSP, partners in APJ can enable their business with Aruba provided sales and marketing assets and products to fast-track go-to-market presence for network as a service," says Aiden James Greene, APJ MSP Program Lead at Aruba.

"Aruba will work with partners in setting up this services line and provide the sales and marketing assets at minimal cost."

At the event, a total of 12 of channel partners were recognised for demonstrating commercial excellence and customer success over the past year.

This year's award winners included:

APJ Experience Edge Solution: StarHub Ltd (Singapore), NTTDATA Customer Service Corporation (Japan), NEC Australia Pty Ltd (Australia)

APJ Managed Service Provider: PT Hipernet Indodata (Indonesia) APJ Champion of Champions: Dongkuk Systems Co. Ltd. (Korea), Digital China Macao Commercial Offshore Ltd. (China), Insung Information (Korea)

APJ Aruba Instant On Top Reseller WLAN: River Network Co. Ltd. (Korea)
 
Top Reseller Wired: Ugent (Korea)

Top Distributor: Daiwabo Information System Co. Ltd. (Japan)

Top Innovative Partner: JJNET International Co. Ltd. (Taiwan)

"Our channel partners continue to deliver outstanding results over the years that exceed market expectations, and all is due to a great partnership and collaboration," says Donna Grothjan, vice president World-Wide Channels at Aruba.

"Enterprises are increasingly becoming more digital and they are looking for the right solutions partner that will help future-proof their hybrid business through secure and seamless remote network connectivity.

"As we continue to innovate as a company and expand our existing portfolio, Aruba and our channels partners are in a great position to provide those solutions for our customers."