Brocade has reported growth in its accreditation partner base across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in the first half of its financial year.
Brocade has seen a 69 percent increase in all partner accreditations, largely driven by interest in the Brocade Certified Ethernet Fabric Professional (BCEFP) level.
Introduced in 2013 as the company’s highest level accreditation, Brocade has seen more than a 1,500 percent increase in BCEFP certifications in the past six months.
This interest is consistent with the finding that more than 60 percent of the channel believe fabric networks will be “standard” or “very common” in data centres by 2020[i].
John Mitchell, Head of Channels, EMEA, Brocade, said, “With many legacy networks now beginning to show their age, businesses are increasingly looking for technology partners to help them deliver next-generation innovation, applications and services. At Brocade, we have designed our accreditations to help our partners seize this opportunity, working with them to build the technical and sales expertise they need to meet the growing demand for emerging technologies such as Software-Defined Networking, Ethernet fabrics and cloud.”
The Brocade Certified Network Engineer accredited partner base has also seen growth in the past six months with new accreditations up by more than a quarter across EMEA.
The growth in accreditations follows a drive from Brocade to help its partners improve their technical expertise. The company updated its Alliance Partner Network (APN) Program earlier in 2014 to help partners to deliver next generation SDN and Ethernet fabric solutions to market.
The company has also recently launched a series of webinars and Partner Academies on emerging technological and market trends.
“We have also had great success with our Partner Academy series, which has been rolled out across EMEA. Academies are already happening in the UK, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, France, UAE and Saudi Arabia, with many more being planned. We are delighted by the interest we have seen in these initiatives and look forward to continuing this momentum in the coming months,” Mitchell added.
Brocade is now looking to build on this channel momentum in the second half of its financial year. The company is planning a focus on sales accreditations within EMEA with incentives for those partners that complete sales training courses.
