Confluent Extends Development, Go-To-Market Resources For SI Partners: Exclusive

With the new “Build with Confluent” program, the company looks to help systems integrators develop use-case solutions around the Confluent data streaming platform and market those solutions to potential customers.

Expanding on its recent initiatives to work with the channel, Confluent today launched the Build with Confluent program through which the company is providing technical and go-to-market assistance to systems integrator partners who develop solutions around Confluent’s data streaming platform.

The new program, which offers specialized software bundles, solution certification and access to sales and marketing resources, is geared toward helping systems integrators develop data streaming use cases and get them in front of prospective customers.

Confluent is touting the new “Build” program as a way to help systems integrators speed up development of real-time data solutions, such as fraud detection, IoT data processing and inventory management, and tap into the $60-billion data streaming market.

“We're taking [systems integrators’] business expertise, where they will create a business result or a business outcome, and combine that with Confluent’s real-time and data streaming expertise,” said Paul Mac Farland, Confluent senior vice president of partner and innovation ecosystem (pictured), in an exclusive interview with CRN.

Confluent, headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., has been stepping up its channel game in the last year with new programs for system integrators, strategic service providers, and technology and software developer partners.

Build with Confluent is an extension of the Accelerate with Confluent program the company launched in April that provides professional services and expertise to better support systems integrators with solution co-delivery, strategic staffing and the ability to work with customers to develop long-term data strategies.

Last year Confluent launched Connect with Confluent in 2023, a partner program geared toward helping technology partners – including database, data analytics and other big data software developers – develop native integrations between their products and the Confluent platform.

And in February of this year Confluent debuted the Confluent Migration Accelerator initiative targeting global and regional systems integrators that implement and integrate Confluent’s data streaming software or cloud service as customers move away from legacy messaging systems.

Confluent, in its announcement, said that systems integrators “have struggled to build comprehensive streaming offerings” due to a lack of resources and technical knowhow, preventing them from capitalizing on the growing demand for data streaming systems.

“How do you take real time as a data streaming platform and change that into business results?” Mac Farland said of the challenge.

The Build with Confluent program includes specialized software bundles, libraries of packaged code and quickly deployable software for the most common data streaming use cases that provide partners with a foundation for developing more specialized offerings.

Build with Confluent also provides certification of partner-developed solutions. Confluent experts will help partners fine-tune their work and provide badges demonstrating that the solutions have been validated by those experts to maximize the value of the Confluent platform and address customers’ business needs.

And partners can work with Confluent sales and marketing teams to boost the market presence of their solutions.

“We work with the SIs to certify the solutions that they create towards that business outcome [and] make sure they're of high quality,” Mac Farland said. “They get to create something that's repeatable, that they can take to market with us.”

Confluent has already been working with a number of early-access partners for the program including Toronto-based GoodLabs Studio, which is active in the Accelerate program and developed its Haystack Vishing AI Penetration Test fraud detection software, used by banks to identify AI voice deepfakes, on Confluent’s platform.

GoodLabs Studio co-founder Thomas Lo told CRN that his company chose to work with the Confluent platform because of connections it has to data sources. “It dramatically simplified the data point integrations and things like that because Confluent has a lot of out-of-the-box integrations.”

Lo said the development assistance and expertise from Confluent was also key. “Because of the opportunity to work with Confluent as such a close partner, we’re able to actually get these solutions done very, very quickly,” he said. “The technical team from Confluent helped us tremendously.” And on the marketing side Confluent’s account executives have provided GoodLabs Studio with introductions to potential clients, Lo added.

Other partners Confluent is already working with through the Build program include Data Reply GmbH and Data Reply S.R.L., GFT Technologies, is-land Systems, iLink Digital, KPMG, MFEC, Ness Digital Engineering, Onibex, Persistent, Platformatory, Psyncopate, Quantyca, and Synthesis Software Technologies.

“IoT data is notoriously hard to wrangle as high volumes of data rush in from various systems, machines, and devices,” said Alex Piermatteo, an associate partner at Data Reply, in a statement. “Our comprehensive telemetry platform offering, developed through Build with Confluent, enables real-time monitoring for IoT devices with long-term storage for data analysis, processing, and exploration. This can surface game-changing insights for organizations across the manufacturing and automotive industries.”