Exclusive: Xamarin Adds Elite Tier To Bolster Consulting Partner Program

Mobile app development startup Xamarin on Thursday rolled out a new Elite tier for its Consulting Partner Program to provide additional recognition and resources for partners who go above and beyond in their mobile innovation services.

Xamarin's new partner Elite tier is the new top tier above the program's existing Authorized and Premier tiers, and targets a select group of partners with higher levels of certifications and more experience working with customers.

"We wanted to recognize the additional investment and scale our partners are bringing Xamarin with their services, by differentiating those that have extended resources and relationships," Greg Urquhart, vice president of Partners and Strategic Alliances at Xamarin, told CRN. "There's huge value for partners in the Elite tier… mobile is continuing to explode and Xamarin is a leader in this space."

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Xamarin, which is wildly popular with developers because it lets them build native iOS and Android apps using Microsoft's C# programming language, has an important need for partners because mobile app customers are looking for third-party expertise, said Urquhart.

The Elite tier currently makes up 2 percent of Xamarin's existing partner ecosystem, and the company wants to grow that number to the 5 percent range, according to Urquhart.

As part of its initial launch, the Consulting Partner Program's Elite tier contains eight partners, and Xamarin is currently working with other partners to validate their certifications for the tier.

Partners with at least 10 certified developers and who have 10 Xamarin projects on an annual basis are qualified to apply to join the Elite tier. In addition, of those 10 Xamarin projects the partner must have two referable customer-based stories as case studies. In comparison, partners in the Premier tier, the next level down, must have three certified professionals and three projects at a given year.

The Elite tier presents an opportunity for regional and global mobile partners to gain additional expert consulting resources such as exclusive enablement programs, access to Xamarin executives for roadmap and feedback sessions, and joint business planning to maximize mobile opportunities.

’Enterprise mobility is top-of-mind for organizations in every industry, and Xamarin makes it possible for us to deliver on this demand at scale…with Xamarin, we are able to deliver high-quality, high-performance apps, using a highly efficient, repeatable lifecycle," said Philippe Ensarguet, CTO at Orange Business Services, an Amsterdam, Netherlands-based Xamarin partner that is one of the eight initial partners in the Elite tier.

Partners in the Elite tier have expertise across Xamarin's entire solution set, such as the Xamarin Platform for app design and mobile architecture best practices, as well as automated testing for mobile quality with Xamarin Test Cloud.

San Francisco-based Xamarin first launched its Consulting Partner Program in 2012, and has since then expanded the program to include more than 350 partners that deliver mobile projects across various vertical industries and use cases.