Hitachi to strengthen partner base

BENGALURU, INDIA: As part of its business strategy, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) is now planning to expand its channel partner program by including more partners in every region.

Talking about this initiative, Harikrishna Prabhu, Director—Channel, HDS India said, “We are planning to have three to five partners in every region. We will help them in building their skillsets by training them on all kinds of solutions and architecting. We train our partners on sales skill, product, technology and how to design solutions. We also conduct hands-on training program for partners which enable them to deliver their own services.”

This channel partner program is called TrueNorth Channel Partners (TNCP) Program. The goal of TrueNorth program is to provide the company and functional teams with strategic access to the resources and experience of a global company, with special emphasis in five key areas—product offering and technology; business development guidance and programs; growth and profitability incentives 360-days a year; training and certification programs and solution sets to drive the growth.

Throwing light on the program, Prabhu said, “Through this partnership with HDS, partners will be benefited from the worldwide brand identity and messages. The partners will enjoy clearly defined rules of engagement that will help them quickly to capture new business.”

The channel partner program has three categories—Global Partners, Gold Partners and Bronze Partners. The Global Partners or OEM partners are Sun and HP. These partners will work closely with HDS to address the needs, whether they are looking for a solution for a specific problem or management of their entire IT infrastructure

Gold Partners or Enterprises Partners are Wipro and Apara. HDS has recently appointed HCL Infosystem as its Gold Partner. They are those who understand the technology, architects the solutions and provide end-to-end solutions to the customers.

The company has nearly 39 Bronze Partners. They are region-specific partners who are more into reselling and are expected to sell more and more solutions.

Apart from this, HDS has a website named Partner Exchange Site, especially designed for the partners. Here, partners can get complete details on the programs, especially on technical presentations, configurations and data sheets.

The site has information about HDS, its products, its partner programs and other benefits it extends to the channel community.