F5 Networks announced the launch of F5 Unity+, an innovative channel program designed to create long-term profitable partner growth. Unity+ enhances partner opportunities and incentives, captures new revenue streams, and drives tighter collaboration to help customers through technology transformation. Recognizing the importance of partners to F5’s growth strategy, the program builds on the long-term success of F5’s industry-leading and trusted channel-first program by offering partners new routes to accelerated profitability with greater flexibility through joint go-to-market activities.
“Digital transformation across Asia is fast changing how our customers purchase and consume technology and in turn, our partners’ go-to-market business models,” said Gabriel Breeman, Vice President, Partner Sales & Alliances, Asia Pacific, China and Japan at F5. “With companies in the region aggressively embarking on their digital transformation journey, we see Unity+ providing the agility and flexibility our partners need to deliver a superior customer experience at speed.”
Unity+ has been specifically designed to address the evolution of the market, F5, and partner business models. The program aims to drive increased partner profitability, expanding beyond traditional booked revenue incentives and rewarding partners for investing in new strategic focus areas, while building on F5’s investment in field sales alignment, new partner tools, and flexible training and enablement opportunities.
“The simplicity and flexibility that Unity+ presents, demonstrates F5’s understanding of the needs of the channel ecosystem against the evolving market demands,” said Joko Gunawan, Director, PT Mastersystem Infotama. “We trust Unity+ will equip us with the tools we need to address a region like Asia Pacific, that’s as nuanced as it is diverse, while accelerating innovation for our customers.”
The Unity+ partner program gives current and new partners a clear path to success in serving their customers with F5’s best in class portfolio of products. Partners have the flexibility to sell F5 solutions in the way that best meets the needs of their customers, while also allowing them to align with the transaction model that fits their core business. Partners in the Unity+ program will continue to enjoy industry-leading benefits, such as margin-rich incentives and rebates, access to market development funds, and alignment with in-field channel sales teams and support services.
“Our partners play a critical role in F5’s overall growth strategy in helping us address the region,” Breeman said, “and Unity+ demonstrates our long-term commitment to ensure continued and collaborative success. In fact, the capabilities of the program is an outcome of F5’s continuous listening and learning from our partners worldwide. As a channel-centric company, our partners’ feedback was critical in allowing us to better enable them with the right tools to meet their business needs and serve our mutual customers with flexible licensing models, greater deal registration differentiation, as well as easy-to-consume sales and pre-sales technical learning paths.”
Unity+ updates will begin to take effect in 2020, evolving over the next several years as F5 and its partners develop new routes to market and deploy new sales and marketing tools. Partners will carry over their status from fiscal year 2019 but will begin to earn qualification for the fiscal year 2021 based on the new Unity+ requirements.
