Silver Peak unveils Champions programme

Further to its pairing with distributor Wick Hill last month, WAN optimisation specialist Silver Peak has today unveiled a new channel programme.

The firm says Silver Peak Champions programme arms partners with sales, marketing and training tools to help them grow their WAN optimisation businesses.

Silver Peak reckons WAN optimisation a key area for networking and storage partners who integrate WAN optimisation into larger IT solutions.

“Silver Peak fills the network performance gap for today’s most critical IT initiatives,” said Ian Kilpatrick, chairman of Wick Hill Group, describing the vendor as “a strategic part of Wick Hill’s existing expansion strategy.”

Wick Hill signed an agreement with Silver Peak to fill the gap in its WAN optimisation portfolio following the fire sale of Expand Networks’ assets to Riverbed (NASDAQ:RVBD) at the end of last year. According to Kilpatrick: “We believe that Silver Peak provides an attractive solution for the majority of Expand customers.”

The Silver Peak Champions partner programme features two levels of participation, gold and platinum.  All partners receive field resources, sales enablement, and joint marketing tools, while Platinum partners also receive sales leads, access to lead generating micro sites, marketing funding and dedicated Silver Peak field and marketing team members.

At present Silver Peak has approximately 25 reseller partners and two distributors in the UK – Wick Hill and CDG, and Commtech in Ireland.

“The channel is 100 percent essential to our business and we are excited to be teaming with our partners to fulfill the WAN optimisation demand around the globe,” says Arturo Cazares, senior vice president of worldwide sales for Silver Peak.

“Silver Peak’s breadth of physical and virtual appliances, and flexible pricing options, provide partners with an enormous opportunity to help customers maximise the performance of their networks while minimising IT costs.”