Partner Trends #036
Your weekly source for news in the world of channel partners, strategic alliances, and partnerships.
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Around the Industry
Square announced it would acquire Afterpay, a “buy now, pay later” service provider, to enable companies to deliver better compelling financial products and services that drive more revenue for merchants. With the acquisition, Square intends to integrate Afterpay into its existing Seller and Cash App business units to unlock the ability for merchants of all sizes to offer the “buy now, pay later” option at check out. Currently, Afterpay serves more than 16 million customers and nearly 100,000 merchants globally.
Salesforce announced it would acquire Servicetrace, a leading provider of robotic process automation (RPA), to help add an automation layer to Mulesoft’s toolkit. With the addition of Servicetrace’s technology, Mulesoft, a Salesforce company, will be able to deliver a leading unified integration, API management, and RPA platform that will enable end-to-end workflow automation across any system. The new RPA capabilities will enhance Salesforce’s Einstein Automate solution and help Salesforce continue to bridge the gap between older on-prem tools and modern cloud software.
Partner Program Announcements
Megaport, a leading global Network as a Service provider, announced the launch of a new partner program to help partners add NaaS solutions to their offerings to increase and drive customer success. The Megaport PartnerVantage will offer two tiers, Prestige and Preferred, with different levels of financial, training, and marketing requirements. In addition, the partner program provides a comprehensive suite of tools and resources to resellers, systems integrators, data center operators, and managed service providers to help them manage all of their customer engagements from quotation to provisioning and invoicing.
6Connex, a global leader in virtual and hybrid event platforms, announced the 6Connex Global Channel Program launch. The program will enable marketing agencies, resellers, and technology providers to collaborate and grow their virtual event capabilities to their customers. Partners in the program will access go-to-market resources such as generous tier-based discounting, sales and technical training and certification, onboarding, enablement, and deal registration.
IRI, a global leader in solutions and services for consumer, retail, and media companies, announced the next evolution of its partner ecosystem. The IRI Marketplace will give clients access to its trusted technology, data, and analytical partners on a single platform. The IRI Marketplace allows clients to select and collaborate with partners by integrating their data, science, algorithms, and solutions to augment existing IRI offerings. In addition, the new marketplace will provide a foundation for developing strategic recommendations and building third-party applications.
ActiveCampaign, a leader in Customer Experience Automation, announced the introduction of a new partner program to accelerate the growth of its partner ecosystem. The Growth Accelerator Program gives qualified partners that have proven they are best in class through reviews and customer feedback additional investment in promotional benefits to ensure clients looking for new tools see theirs immediately. Additionally, interested software providers should apply to the program to secure their place as their category partners.
Partnership Announcements
Qumu, a leading provider of cloud-based video technology, and JS Group, a channel strategy consulting firm, announced a strategic partnership to launch a new global channel program. Under the partnership, JS Group will support partner enablement and additional channel frameworks for Qumu to connect with new channel partners. In addition, the new program will offer resources such as partner incentives, customer benefits, operational and market development funds.
Stellar Cyber and Blackberry announced a partnership to accelerate the adoption of AI-powered security solutions for enterprises and managed security service providers (MSSPs). With the partnership, both companies will offer an integrated solution that combines Blackberry’s prevention-first AI-driven Unified Endpoint Security offerings with Stellar Cyber’s security operations platform. In addition, by partnering with Stellar Cyber, Blackberry expects to accelerate its entry into the security operations center solution space by giving resellers and go-to-market partners the ability to add advanced operational center capabilities to its existing investments.
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