Fleet Launches Inaugural Partner Program As It Adopts A 100 Percent Channel Sales Model: Exclusive

Fleet, a rising developer of mobile device management technology, is looking to the channel—including resellers and service providers—as it scales up sales and supports customers on a global basis.

Fleet Device Management is launching its inaugural partner program today as the developer of open-source device management technology transitions to a 100 percent channel model and puts partners at the center of its go-to-market strategy.

With the new program, which provides tracks for reseller and service partners, every Fleet sales deal will flow through a partner, according to the company. The new program will provide partner training and certification, deal registration and other resources.

“Partner first. Every deal will have a partner on it,” said Fleet CEO and co-founder Mike McNeil (pictured) in an exclusive interview with CRN.

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Fleet Device Management, founded in 2020 and headquartered in San Francisco, develops its namesake mobile device management (MDM) platform that enables organizations to secure, manage and optimize mobile and desktop IT assets that run on MacOS, iOS, Windows, Linux, Android and ChromeOS. The Fleet system enables automated device configuration and deployment, for example, and provides centralized security and compliance capabilities.

The Fleet technology, which takes an “infrastructure-as-code” approach to device management, grew out of an open-source software project at Facebook called Osquery. A free, open-source version of the Fleet software is available under the MIT license.

nDuo, a London-based Apple security, compliance and support services provider, recently began working with Fleet and has been introducing the company’s platform to its clients. nDuo CEO Michael Wiercioch, in an interview with CRN, said that while his company works with mobile device management technology from other vendors, there are advantages to adding Fleet to nDuo’s portfolio because it has capabilities that legacy MDM platforms do not.

“Having a platform that is all-in-one means that it doesn’t really matter if you have a Windows device or you have a Mac device or a Linux device—you have one solution that addresses all of the specific challenges around device management,” he said.

“Having an open-source platform is another big win,” Wiercioch added, especially within larger organizations with in-house developers who want to understand the technology roadmaps of the IT they work with.

Recent industry trends and developments are driving demand for device management in general and Fleet’s platform in particular, according to CEO McNeil. The growing use of AI and AI agents for automation is making people re-think how they manage user devices, for example. More businesses are adopting Apple laptops, such as the recently debuted MacBook Neo, for corporate use, which means that more businesses are managing mixed inventories of devices.

“Fleet has been gaining momentum in the market,” said Tony Walteur, a senior solution director at Amaris Consulting, a global IT consulting firm headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. Walteur, in an interview with CRN, highlighted Fleet’s track record of innovation and noted the Fleet platform’s ability to support many different types of devices. “The fact that Fleet can do Android, Windows, Linux [and] Apple is great. This is the type of solution that the [clients] I talk to are looking for,” he said.

And more Fleet customers, which tend to be large corporations with hundreds or thousands of devices, are asking Fleet and its partners to take on more tasks around—and in addition to—the Fleet platform, McNeil said. While Fleet does provide some customer services, scaling up those services as the company grows is a challenge.

“We would much rather enable [partners] that can do that at scale,” the CEO said. Partners can “help us deliver value to those customers…and turn this into a great business.”

New Fleet Execs Driving Change

Fleet’s pivot to the channel follows several recent appointments to the company’s executive ranks including Chaz MacLaughlin as vice president of global sales and Ashish Kuthiala as chief marketing officer.

MacLaughlin, who joined Fleet in January, has two decades of experience in sales and revenue roles in the IT and security industries including posts at Lucidum, Signal Sciences, MobileIron and Imperva. Most recently he was chief revenue officer at Nucleus Security for nearly four years.

Kuthiala, hired by Fleet in November 2025, has a record of deep channel experience from positions at HPE, GitLab, Traceable AI and BlinkOps. At HPE he launched the company’s DevOps go-to-market strategy in conjunction with the HPE partner ecosystem, while at Gitlab he launched the company’s channel program during a period of rapid growth.

Fleet’s channel momentum is getting an additional boost from today’s announcement that Suresh Bhatchu, co-founder of MobileIron, has been appointed to Fleet’s board of directors, bringing to the company his extensive experience in channel-driven MDM.

Bhatchu, in an interview with CRN, said he is impressed with Fleet’s technology, including the platform’s ability to support on-premises and cloud systems and its incorporation of the Osquery operating system monitoring tool. “Everything starts with the product,” he said.

Bhatchu said Fleet is well-positioned to meet today’s demands for hyper-automation of IT and business processes—including device management. “Everything needs to be completely automated as much as possible, and Fleet is in the right position for that. I think Fleet is built for the modern world,” he said.

And given his experience at MobileIron, Bhatchu has encouraged Fleet’s embrace of the channel. “One of the things I have been advocating to the [Fleet] team from the beginning is ‘go to the channel.’ Don’t wait too long because the channel is the way to scale the company,” he said.

Fleet began working with a limited number of partners two years ago and McNeil said about 10 percent of the company’s business is currently done through partners.

Fleet partners have different business models with some selling mobile devices and offering Fleet as a premium service. Others develop applications that work with the Fleet platform. Device leasing company Primo, for example, offers Fleet as part of its broader software and services portfolio.

Fleet’s own sales force, which McNeil said has always been particularly focused on providing customers with deep pre-sales and post-sales technical and enablement expertise, is now focused on providing that expertise as they work with the channel. “Those are the same people that go out with partners,” the CEO said.

Sales chief MacLaughlin, meanwhile, is hiring channel account managers—including a recent hire in Europe.

CMO Kuthiala, in the interview with CRN, said Fleet is effectively already operating as a channel-only company with all sales deals in the pipeline involving a partner. “We’re already 100-percent channel,” he said.

At nDuo, Wiercioch expects Fleet will become an increasingly bigger part of his business because the company can innovate faster than competitors who must devote resources to maintaining “a lot of legacy tech.”

Wiercioch said Fleet’s new partner program will standardize processes for support and he praised Fleet’s developers “who are always happy to jump on a call” when needed. “And it will definitely open a lot of doors into sharing knowledge, [because] you want to get as many people from your team to be as familiar with the solution as they can.”

Channel Program Details

Fleet says the new channel program is focused on “simplicity, clarity and partner profitability.”

The program’s reseller track is for partners who are approved to sell Fleet and are equipped with the resources and training to effectively position and co-sell the Fleet platform. Partners are eligible for public deal registration, dedicated support, market development and co-marketing funds, and what the company calls “strong upfront margins.”

The services partner track is for partners who go beyond resale to provide continued value, according to the vendor. They are fully enabled to sell Fleet and trained to provide implementation, deployment and managed services. The company said the services track is geared toward partners looking to build recurring revenue streams around Fleet deployments.

Fleet is also providing partners with training for “infrastructure as code” and “AI in IT” certifications.

Amaris Consulting is developing a service provider relationship with Fleet. “Our goal is really to become strategic partners, working hand-in-hand with each other,” Walteur said.

Amaris is focused on four verticals (life sciences, information systems and digital, telecommunications, and engineering) and Walteur said that while his company will be reselling the Fleet platform, his company’s focus is on providing a range of client services including implementation and 24/7 support.

“This is where we’re different from your typical reseller…we don’t look at partnership on the transaction level. It’s really how we can help [Fleet] succeed. And how they can help us succeed,” Walteur said. “The goal is really to support the customers and help them understand the real value that Fleet brings.”

Fleet sees Jamf, which develops a platform for managing and securing Apple devices, as a leading competitor. Fleet is offering incentives, including additional margin and enhanced deal protection, for partners who support customers who shift from Jamf to Fleet. (Microsoft’s Intune for managing endpoint devices is also a competitor, as are endpoint management systems from other vendors.)

Fleet is currently recruiting new partners with an initial goal of working with several dozen or more, although McNeil said that a number of those “will rise to the top” by investing in the Fleet relationship and becoming strategic partners. Ultimately, the partner ranks will increase as the company’s partner ecosystem grows globally.

While Fleet’s channel efforts are global, the company is particularly focused on North America and Europe, although the company is also seeing customer interest in Asia, including Singapore and Australia. “This is where partners help us extend our reach,” Kuthiala said.

And CEO McNeil emphasized that partner success won’t be measured by sales volume, but by how well partners work with and support joint customers. “I think that’s how we’re going to evaluate success at the end of the day,” he said.