Canonical’s Partner Program Gets Industry Recognition for its Growth and Depth of Portfolio

Program Grows Five-Fold, Expands to New Geographies; VP of Global Alliances Regis Paquette is Named a CRN Channel Chief

Feb. 17, 2021 – Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, announced today that its channel partner program has grown by five times in three years and expanded its global presence to several new markets, such as Russia, India and Africa. These partners, spanning all major industries, are building successful businesses around Canonical’s industry-leading open source technology for the Internet of Things, data centers, private, public, and hybrid clouds.

The company also announced that Regis Paquette, Vice President Global Alliances, Public Cloud and Channels, has been included by CRN^®, a brand of The Channel Company, in its 2021 Channel Chiefs honor.

The impressive momentum of Canonical’s channels program is the result of four different initiatives. First, the deeper engagements with all major OEMs such as IBM, Dell EMC, Ericsson etc. to help them build solutions based on Canonical technologies.  

“IBM and Canonical have a long standing history of working together across IBM Z, Power Systems and IBM Cloud. We look forward to continuing our commitment to Linux and making IBM Z an open platform to serve our clients, made possible only by a diverse ecosystem of partners like Canonical,” said Barry Baker, Vice President, Offering Management, IBM Z & LinuxONE.

Secondly contributing to channel program momentum is a greater focus made on distributors and VARs, to both satisfy a greater variety of VARS and also multiply the service reach for Canonical services globally by certifying VARs on support and delivery of Ubuntu. Factor Group, Fairbanks, Netweb, NextGen, Corespace have all added certification and great business successes as a result in 2020. 

Factor Group is a prime example of the channel program’s momentum and global reach. Serving the IT and Telcom market in Russia and the CIS countries since 1991, the company is building cloud solutions for customers based on Ubuntu, Charmed OpenStack, and Charmed Kubernetes. In 2020, Factor Group and Canonical teamed up to help MTS, Russia’s largest mobile operator, build and deploy a 5G network.

“The latest market trends for open source solutions with commercial-grade support are raised dramatically in Russia and CIS region,” said Victor Larin, COO Factor Group. “Follow Factor Group company strategy for project-oriented distribution, Canonical solutions can bring a lot of business possibilities for our 500+ channel partners in a region to fill the demand gap from the customers for cost-effective solutions powered by open source. By partnering with Canonical for seven years we like to be Canonical Evangelists and drive the innovations in our geo region together with them.”

“Our Canonical partnership enabled CoreSpace to provide clients with cost-effective NextGen Cloud Solutions combined with first-class service and support,” Said Mark Wulff, COO, CoreSpace, Inc.

Fairbanks builds, manages and has supported open infrastructures for over a decade now and is one of the strongest OpenStack cloud companies in Europe. Ruud Harmsen, founder & CEO says, “With our years-long experience with, for example OpenStack private clouds, we have worked closely together with Canonical all this time. At minimum, we serve as a liaison between Canonical and the customer, but due to our close relation with the customer, being responsible for the full operations of their cloud platform, Canonical delegates first and second line support on their software to us as well. This way we solve non software related issues much sooner in the process and get direct access to the software developers at Canonical in case we do find a bug in the software. This unique partner cooperation benefits us as well as Canonical, but most importantly: our customers.” 

Thirdly, Canonical attributes channel program growth to launching a true joint offering with major public cloud brands, such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services(AWS) and Google around Ubuntu Pro. 

And last but not least, success was achieved by launching a GSI Partner Program and landing flagship deals with big brands such as Tata Consulting Services, HPE or Infosys.

“Canonical is a valuable member and Silver partner in HPE’s Partner Ready for Technology Partner Program, where we integrate, test and certify HPE ProLiant servers on the Canonical platform. As a trusted partner, we applaud their program expansion and continued growth in delivering innovative open source technology,” said Judy O’Brien Chavis, Executive Director Business Development, Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

The prestigious CRN^® Channel Chiefs list, released annually, recognizes leading IT channel vendor executives who continually demonstrate outstanding leadership, influence, innovation, and growth.

“I’m excited about this honor from CRN and delighted by our program’s momentum,” said Regis Paquette, Vice President Global Alliances, Public cloud and Channels at Canonical. “Both are testaments to our team’s dedication to helping from resellers to strategic partners worldwide deliver and support Canonical technology from the desktop to all internet-connected things and grow their businesses. It is also the recognition that Ubuntu & Canonical are becoming brands for business.”

The CRN 2021 Channel Chiefs are prominent leaders who have influenced the IT channel with cutting-edge strategies, programs and partnerships. All honorees are selected by CRN’s editorial staff based on their dedication, industry prestige, and exceptional accomplishments as channel advocates.

“CRN’s 2021 Channel Chiefs list includes the industry’s biggest channel evangelists, a group of individuals who work tirelessly on behalf of their partners and drive growth through the development of strong partner programs and innovative business strategies that help bring business-critical solutions to market,” said Blaine Raddon, CEO of The Channel Company. “The Channel Company is proud to recognize these channel influencers and looks forward to following their continued success.”

Benefits of Canonical’s channel program include:

• Rich portfolio of products: Partners are able to resell the full range of Canonical’s portfolio of private and public cloud products: Openstack, Kubernetes, IoT, support, security and compliance for Ubuntu.
• Sales engagement: Canonical helps train field sales and presales teams and provides sales collateral and permission to use the Canonical and Ubuntu trademarks in the partner’s materials.
• Training and certification: Partners gain access to technology that is the foundation for digital transformation and gets to become certified for L1, L2 support levels, cloud and K8s delivery capabilities, as well as marketing support and alignment with a trusted brand.
• Technical enablement: Canonical provides in-depth technical training for partners’ customer engineering teams with access to technical resources for labs and customer engagements.
• Go-to-market: Working with Canonical’s dedicated partner team, partners get new joint marketing opportunities and lead generation.

About Canonical

Canonical is the company behind Ubuntu, the leading OS for cloud operations. Most public cloud workloads use Ubuntu, as do most new smart gateways, switches, self-driving cars and advanced robots. Canonical provides enterprise support and services for commercial users of Ubuntu. Established in 2004, Canonical is a privately held company.