Maya Zakhour, Director Area Partner Lead at NetApp on how the company provides partners with a unified engagement model where they can move seamlessly between sell-to, sell-through and sell-with sales motions that accelerate their revenue.
What is NetApp’s focus going to be at GITEX?
We are thrilled to participate in GITEX this year, which offers us an excellent platform to showcase our solutions in the Middle East. Our main objective is to have a significant impact in this region by presenting practical use cases of our technologies and strengthening partnerships with collaborators. We are committed to demonstrating how our solutions effectively address the business challenges of both existing customers and potential prospects. Our event approach has three key objectives: meeting customers at the venue for direct engagement with our NetApp team, a comprehensive partner approach featuring our branding on the show floor and specific collaborations with our wider hyperscaler ecosystem. In fact we’ll also be present at the Ingram, Google Cloud and Logicom booths.
Web 3 is this year’s GITEX theme. How is NetApp empowering its partners to seamlessly navigate the fast-growing technology landscape?
Web 3 is a concept that envisions a decentralised and user-centric internet ecosystem. It aims to address some of the limitations and challenges of the current web (Web 2.0) by incorporating blockchain technology, decentralised networks, and cryptographic principles.
NetApp’s commitment to data portability, protection, and personal data protection is reflected in its product offerings and security features. NetApp’s data fabric architecture allows organisations to easily migrate, replicate, and manage data across various platforms, ensuring data portability and flexibility. NetApp’s snapshot technology allows for quick and efficient point-in-time copies of data, enabling rapid recovery in case of data loss or corruption. Additionally, NetApp’s backup and recovery solutions provide comprehensive data protection strategies, including backup to secondary storage systems or cloud repositories. And in terms of Personal Data Protection, NetApp’s solutions include built-in security features, such as data encryption, access controls, and data classification, to protect personal data from unauthorised access or breaches. NetApp also provides data governance capabilities to help organisations manage and comply with data privacy regulations (as GDPR).
Why is participation at shows like GITEX important for NetApp?
At GITEX we’ll showcase how our customers can modernise infrastructure to deliver new capabilities to the business, faster. Build a seamless and unified hybrid infrastructure with a consistent operating model on-prem and in the cloud, so you can flex and scale anywhere your apps and data need to be.
NetApp will be at GITEX with a meeting room located on Concourse 2 on the 1st Floor, above Hall 6. Room Sharjah D will be the centre of all our activities and meeting with customers, partners and prospective clients.
Give us an overview of NetApp’s partner ecosystem. What are the latest features?
Our new NetApp Partner Sphere Program, which has been announced recently, further solidifies NetApp’s commitment to driving a partner-first culture that creates an ecosystem of collaboration and innovation to capture greater market share by growing flash revenue, accelerating cloud adoption, and leveraging partner-led solutions and services.
Partner-first program approach incentivises alignment with NetApp’s strategy while delivering greater customer value and accelerated growth. Partner Sphere provides a unified engagement model where partners can move seamlessly between sell-to, sell-through, and sell-with sales motions that accelerate their revenue by driving customer-based outcomes and outpacing competition.
The program offers 11 Services Certified tracks and 19 Solution Competencies aligned to 3 key focus areas that enable partners to expand their services portfolio and become trusted advisors to their customers–unlocking greater value and accelerating revenue growth through ongoing service engagements.
Now that we’re in the last few months of the year, what are the key learnings?
I think that a key learning we can mention is that data continues to play a crucial role in today’s world, serving as a valuable asset for businesses, organisations, and individuals. And at NetApp we help organisations harness the power of data through our solutions and services. The exponential growth of data and the increasing importance of effective data management we are facing, with the proliferation of digital platforms, IoT devices, and emerging technologies, businesses are generating and storing vast amounts of data is an evidence of the importance of providing scalable and efficient data management solutions to help organisations handle and derive value from their data.
